I want Front Row Back

Just confirming my previous post that Front Row running under Snow Leopard can still play music from ITunes 11. It is Mountain Lion that breaks the Front Row/Music link.

I am the creator of the AppleScript you used in your so-called discovery. As for the claim that Mountain Lion breaks Front Row, that is not so. The same thing happened under Lion. The culprit is the structure that iTunes 10.4+ enforces on its own "iTunes Library.itl" when running on a 64-bit operating system. That is why Front Row continues to work flaswlessly with iTunes 10.4.x or iTunes 11 under Snow Leopard (a 32-bit operating system), whereas iTunes integration is broken in both Lion and Mountain Lion if iTunes 10.4.x or iTunes 11 is run. Front Row will still play iTunes music and videos in Lion/Mountain Lion if "iTunes Library.itl" has 10.3.1 structure.

Just to be sure I properly understand : any iTunes library created under a 32 bit system (Snow Leopard or below) can run in Front Row "read only" as long as the library has never been modified after been copied to the Lion / Mountain Lion disk : right ?

No, the issue is not the operating system as such. It's the version of "iTunes Library.itl". It the version of "iTunes Library.itl" is 10.3.1 or below (even in a 64-bit operating system, such as Lion or Mountain Lion), Front Row will read that library correctly (even in Lion and Mountain Lion). The problem is that iTunes 10.4+ will modify the structure of "iTunes Library.itl" under 64-bit operating systems in such a way that it's no longer compatible with Front Row. Back in the days of Lion, I created a relatively complex AppleScript that was able to run BOTH iTunes 10.3.1 AND iTunes 10.4+ in Lion and allowed one to use Front Row with an old version of one's library, or revert to the new version of the same library, thereby restoring iCloud compatibility. That original AppleScript can be slightly modified for it to run with Mountain Lion and launch Front Row, etc., but I haven't had the time or the inclination to effect the modification myself. I just created a much shorter version that simply launches Front Row itself, leaving the issue of iTunes library compatibility to the user.

I haven't checked the effect of making "iTunes Library.itl" read-only, but that would hardly be useful, as far as updating your iTunes library is concerned.

Sorry, I was not clear enough : from your posts, I understand that running iTunes 10.3.1 under Snow Leopard will keep iTunes Library.itl Front Row compatible, even when later running under Lion or Mountain Lion AS LONG AS it is not modified from the original 10.3.1 version (what I called "read only Front Row").

And I was wondering if running even iTunes 11 under the same Snow Leopard (not 64 bits) would still keep iTunes Library.itl Front Row compatible, when migrated AND NOT MODIFIED under Lion or Mountain Lion.

I have 2 Macs, and my "Master Mac" still runs Leopard with Front Row, although my HTMini runs Lion, with videos and music libraries slaved to my Master Mac.

Under Snow Leopard, all versions of "iTunes Library.itl" (including versions 10.4+, 10.5+, 10.7+ and 11) are Front Row-compatible. The problem comes when iTunes 10.4+, etc. are run in 64-bit mode (i.e., in Lion/Mountain Lion). The moment you do that, the structure of "iTunes Library.itl" changes, and Front Row compatibility is broken. Even if you were to backup your iTunes 11 folders under Snow Leopard and restore them to Mountain Lion, the "iTunes Library.itl" structure would be compatible for as long as you DIDN'T run iTunes 10.4+. Once you run it, Front Row compatibility will be lost.

Naturally, you can resort to my first AppleScript and install iTunes 10.3.1 AND iTunes 11 on your Mountain Lion machine. That way, you decide if, at one given moment, you have an iCloud-compatible "iTunes Library.itl" OR a Front Row-compatible "iTunes Library.itl", but you have to do the swapping yourself and see to it that you don't inadvertently run iTunes 11 when the current version of "iTunes Library.itl" is 10.3.1.

Thank you Edumara for that explanation. All the more reason to retain Snow Leopard on old Macs so they can be "retired" as media centres capable of running Front Row in all its glory.

As I reported on 25th Nov, Apple is still selling (and presumably supporting ) Snow Leopard, which will run iTunes 11 and remains compatible with Front Row. There are many Macs in use that cannot run Mountain Lion so this situation should continue for some time.

Does anyone see the correlation with unsatisfied loyal customers and Apple stock price. Satisfaction has erroded and so has apple stock price. Boy I miss Steve! The Apple company does to as quiet as it is kept.

This discussion started in July 2011 when dismayed Lion users found that Front Row had vanished. Evidently the decision was made many months before that, when Steve was still at the helm.

Since then we have waited to see what brilliant corporate strategy would justify dropping Front Row - an AppleTV app for the Mac, iTV or whatever - but nothing has turned up. It seems so simple to update Front Row to run on Lion or Mountain Lion and keep many Mac users happy.

So if you are new to this discussion please send feedback to Apple:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Of course I'd like to find Front Row back on OS X.

At present, it must be put in evidence, nothing replaces Front Row on my computer screen.

Apple TV is a different strategy ...

Thank you for giving attention to this message

Thank you for the suggestion feedback

happy Holidays

I'm stil running Snow Leopard on an older iMac (just haven't bit the bullet yet on a new one), and lately I've had a problem with the video and audio being out of sync in Front Row.

What happens is that when I watch Movies & TV Shows in Front Row, the video and audio fall out of sync after approximately 10 minutes. It's like watching a poorly dubbed Martial Arts flick. If I hit the menu button on my remote to back to the movie or episode list, then select the program I was watching and resume play, the video and audio are in sync again, but only for about 10 minutes and then I have to back out and resume play again.

As a result, I've been watching everything in iTunes, which is kind of annoying. I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure the problem started when I installed iTunes 11. I had hoped the recent iTunes 11 update would solve the problem, but it hasn't.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Please start a new discussion on your topic. This one is about Apple dropping Front Row. You are more likely to get an answer with a separate discussion topic.

That hasn't been my experience so far, which is why I posted the question in a thread that's actually seen some activity lately. But thanks anyway.

My apologies - the audio-syncing problem is relevant to this discussion. When I reported that Front Row worked with iTunes 11 running under Snow Leopard I had only watched the start of a couple of movies to check there were no authorisation problems. With my system (Snow Leopard and iTunes 11) I had the audio-sync problem start after about 10 minutes but only for movies purchased through iTunes. The copy-protection system seems to have changed.

I have restored a Time Machine back-up of my system to return to iTunes 10.7 and the same movies run without problems.

I did try to just replace the iTunes app and Music library to older versions, using Time Machine, but ran into Store authorisation difficulties so had to do a full system restore.

So the lesson is: if you want to run Front Row do not "upgrade" to iTunes 11.

I'm late to the party; just upgraded our family system to Mountain Lion, and found Front Row is gone. I've missed all the lessons above. I regret the upgrade, and paying for it; we used it regularly. Very disappointing. Apple, would love for you to bring this back.

...sigh