Zeno vient de réussir à faire tourner Front Row sur un Mac mini. L’interface de type Media Center d’Apple n’est désormais plus réservée aux utilisateurs des nouveaux iMac G5, de quoi mettre un peu plus la pression sur les développeurs de CenterStage et d’iTheater. Un autre utilisateur de Mac Mini est également parvenu à utiliser Front Row, un tutoriel est disponible en ligne.
MàJ:
- D’après plusieurs commentaires d’utilisateurs, la lecture de fichiers DivX semble possible dans Front Row, grâce au codec DivX Fusion bêta 3 pour Mac, téléchargeable sur le site des DivX Labs.
- Le petit tutoriel d’installation de Front Row n’est plus disponible. Sa lecture, hier, m’a laissé dubitatif : et si, effectivement, Apple prévoyait de le diffuser au-delà de ses nouveaux iMac G5 ? Et si, tout simplement, Front Row devait être intégré à Mac OS X 10.4.3 qui doit être disponible sous peu ? Les instructions d’installation faisaient en effet référence à cette nouvelle mis à jour de Tiger. Celle-ci doit intégrer un nouveau composant indispensable à Front Row mais absent de 10.4.2. A suivre.
Nigel Pearson suspect “developers will say “why bother?”. “If Front Row works like a good Apple application, then there is little need for these projects. Of course, choice is good, but there is so much development still to do on them, I think they will die.” Inronicaly, Nigel notices that “it is also very interesting how close the names CentreStage and Front Row are. Conceptually identical.“
Zeno Crivelli is also worried : “For the developers of centerStage, the moment when Steve Jobs clicked on the Apple Remote and launched Front Row (with amazingly fluid visual effects) must have felt just as if he had taken a stick to beat them !” According to him, this launch surely “hurts a lot [...] no matter what they can say. But they are not the only ones to be hurt : it must have been even worst for the guys at Trinity Software who just launched Seagull 3 and now discover iTunes 6.”
Ed Wolf seems more optimistic: “it’s something that we have been preparing for over the last few months, so it didn’t come as a surprise. If you remember from your first interview with me, I said that it was just a matter of time [before Apple released their own Media Center App]. Anyways, from what I saw from Front Row today, I think it to be a beginning of something much bigger. Front Row looks like its a solid application, but it lacks in the areas that it can only show your local media files, and that it is only available for the new iMac line. The new remote is nifty, but its kind of a hack that Apple did. In order to read the signals, the new iSight reads the IR sensor on the remote to interpret the commands… a bit cheezy, but it works. ” According to Ed, “in regards to iTheater, Front Row is a competitor, but not in a way that we were all expecting. Instead of releasing a mac-wide media center application, Apple has limited the program to the new iMacs. Whats the point of having a media center if you cant hook it up to a TV ? I defeats the purpose of having a media center to have everyone huddled around a computer screen. That’s where I think our project will have the advantage. We are developing a piece of software that will interact with tons of different hardware configuration, and will be able to pull media content from every shared computer on your home network (via Encore).”
Neil Curry sees it the same way : “I don’t see Front Row affecting us, especially as only currently available with new iMacs. Also I doubt will ever be as flexable as CenterStage.” Antoine Duchâteau, lead developer for the CenterStage Project explains “We knew from the beginning that something like that would happen but we could just expect it to come later. For sure, this launch raises some fears but it’s also satisfying. First, there are similarities that clearly show that we’ve heading to the right direction for the GUI. The launch of Front Row also puts pressure on us, encouraging us to accelerate.” With confidence, Antoine stresses on the differences of approach. “Apple clearly wants to use Front Row to promote the new iMac G5 – and probably a new Mini to come. CenterStage has a wider scope. It’s an open platform not limited to iLife content. We’re planning modules for MAME games and DVD rip, for example. The next version of CenterStage – not the one to come in a few days but the one after – will integrate a network layer to share and play multimedia content across a network, in streaming.” Finally, Antoine strongly believes that “there’s room enough here for different and competitive projects.”
