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So...I just took a five hour trip with the Mini and several front ends in the car. The upshot is that none of them *quite* work the way I'd like them to.
I'm mostly in need of music and navigation. The music come from both the Mini itself and XM. I buy music on iTunes, so I have music with DRM in it. I also have a dead touchscreen on an 8.4" screen that I haven't been able to find a replacement for. I use either the keyboard/mouse or a Griffin Powermate for control.
-Car Front End - Works fine, but is playlist based. Doesn't work with spaces, though. To access navigation, you have to quit the program.
-Neon Boombox - Lots of promise, but doesn't do playlists. You can use Spaces on it to reveal the nav program running in a different space, making it compatible with nav.
-FrontRow - Works best, includes video, photos, etc. When you get out to fuel the car and restart, picks up where it left off, like a radio. Can be controlled with Powermate. Can't be used with spaces, therefore no nav capability. Also, don't like the 'now playing' screen. Very murky in daylight, text too small.
None of the frontends I tested can play or control XM.
It'm very glad to see development in Mac front ends and grateful to have betas to test. It's difficult for someone like myself who knows more than the average user but less than the application programmers and hackers to cobble together a front end that works with just a few music inputs.
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