Apple have announced an interesting new product: the Airport Express. It allows computers with wireless capability to stream music (via an iTunes variant) to remote base stations. These base stations are, in turn, connected to your hi-fi.
Now, while I like the idea and being able to listen to my music collection on my stereo would be fantastic, I’ve got one question: when I’m upstairs listening to music via said stereo, how do I control the base station?
It would be easy to create a remote control that told the base station to tell the computer to fast forward/rewind/pause etc. As far as I can tell though, there is no mention of such functionality. I see that as a fundamental flaw. Music with no control? Hmm. A pause button is a minimum requirement in my book.
Posted: June 9th, 2004
#Permalink: Controlling Airport, By Gary Fleming
Blimey. I hadn’t even thought of that.Not that I shall be buying it anyway :)
We-el…
1) Playlists are mostly OK.. just leave stuff playing
2) Salling clicker ( http://homepage.mac.com/jonassalling/Shareware/Clicker/ ) would do fairly well for macs. Limited range though as it’s BlueTooth.
3) This is the precursor (or so the rumours go) to a wireless iPod, something that’s been requested for quite a while. You’d be able to stream from your iPod to the Airport Express and could use the iPod as remote. Still rumour but a distinct possibility.
The whole wireless music thing isn’t the main selling point of Airport Express. More the fact that it’s a fully functional 802.11b base station that’s teensy. You can take it anywhere, plug it in and wham wireless network.
# Posted by Neil, on June 9th, 2004 at 7:06 pm
Sil: I’m sure some Linux guy will hack it within a month or two. Then it’ll only be another 6 months before a desktop level user can get it running. :P
Neil: I can appreciate the other features, but it’s being pimped heavily (by Apple) for the music features. Hell, the entire site is almost entirely about the music, so leaving out control is a glaring omission.
# Posted by Gary Fleming, on June 9th, 2004 at 10:38 pm