Jul
19th
Sat
19th
the ultimate home stereo, thanks to apple
i remember as a kid when my parents built a house for the first time. we’d been staying in a rental house during construction, and crews had been finishing up the final wiring and painting. you’d think the first thing your family would do would be to sit down and have a family dinner, or light a fire in the fireplace. but no. my dad walked straight to the stereo he’d had wired throughout most of the house, took out his genesis greatest hits CD, and turned the volume on as loud as it would go.sixteen years later, i’ve just enjoyed an experience that, frankly, was even better.
with the release of the new iphone - and for those of us who already owned one, the iphone 2.0 operating software - a quietly touted iphone app called “apple remote” may be the only thing that can hold a candle to watching the smile of a man who had worked for the better part of 15 years to hear “i can’t dance” echoing throughout his entire first and second floor.
what before was a fairly expensive proposition - a high-powered receiver, multiple amplifiers, an infrared control system, and several hundred feet of speaker wire installed through walls by a professional electrician - is now available for the cost of an iphone and one or more $99 airport express wireless routers in conjunction with your existing stereo(s).
through apple remote, an application freely available on the app store, your iphone turns into a remote with the ability to connect to any computer on your wireless network and control that machine’s itunes. in turn, through itunes’ “multiple speaker” setting, that same machine then sends out a wireless signal to any airport express you have on your network - which have audio outputs. so basically, you can have an unlimited number of airport express’ running an unlimited number of stereos simultaneously - all controlled through your phone running a playlist off your computer.
while great for normal home listening while you’re sitting in the living room or cooking in the kitchen, this is especially critical during parties — with your phone in your pocket, you can DJ on the fly from your full music library, and avoid the chronic problem of having “guest DJs” screw with a laptop sitting out in plain view next to your stereo. you’ll feel like it’s 1988 and you’re at an exhibit in the epcot center.
iphone, itunes, and apple express wireless routers available at http://apple.com.