UPDATED - 4/25/09
I’ve played with this a little more now, and I cannot see a use for it yet. Perhaps if you were stuck with a crappy PC that had no sound card or no headphones jack, this would give you remote wireless headphones via the phone. And because you have to launch the mobile app before Airfoil can broadcast to that destination, my idea of joining a “radio station” wouldn’t be possible. Using this app out-of-reach of the Airfoil source would just get annoying. Third, a phone call properly silences the incoming music, but that results in audio reverting to the host computer’s speakers… hope that’s okay in your quiet office! Oh, and it doesn’t automatically reconnect (yet?) when the phone call is over.
ORIGINAL POST
I love Rogue Amoeba’s apps, but Airfoil Speakers Touch feels like they are just cutting their teeth on the iPhone SDK for when bigger and more useful companion apps become possible. Rogue Amoeba has announced the release of Airfoil Speakers Touch, a free companion app for their cross-platform audio streaming tool Airfoil. This app gives any iPhone or iPod Touch the ability to receive streaming audio from an Airfoil app on your local wi-fi network. It’s a free download on the iTunes App Store. Airfoil is required and a free demo can be downloaded from Rogue Amoeba. Licenses (which remove the 10 minute time-limit) are $25.
A while back I wrote about my 4-part solution to stream audio across a network and still have your listening count. It’s oddly become one of our highest traffic posts, currently ranking #7 in a Google search for “airfoil iphone”.
My hunch is that most people want a way to broadcast from their mobile device to another person’s audio system – a wireless patch cable.
With this app, you still can’t stream from your iPod Touch/iPhone in the same way that Airfoil does – it is receive-only. (I guess it would be good for like an office-wide “radio” station (see update above) or something?) Also, since you only receive audio while the Airfoil Speakers Touch app is open, you can’t use Remote to change the song at the music source either.
But maybe if you had one phone running Remote controlling an iTunes streaming thru Airfoil to another iPhone receiving…..
I think we’ll have to wait for some of the features coming in iPhone 3.0 before streaming off the phone will be possible. I’m sure if I’m getting the Google hits on this, Rogue Amoeba surely is as well and will be on top of things.
Previously: