dnak
If you’ve played with Apple’s new “Remote” iPhone app, you probably already see that it is going to be a big deal, at least in the home entertainment realm. A quick rundown of what it does:
- Controls the ITunes running on any computer over a wi-fi connection
- Controls all Apple TV servers in your house
- Displays album/video artwork in a dynamic interface on the iPhone
And it’s a full featured remote… allowing full control (play, pause, skip, etc.) while also allowing you to do a full search of your iTunes library from the touch screen interface.
Why is this a big deal? Many of the solutions out there for managing your music and movies and playing them in your house are still prohibitively expensive. There are a whole mess of expensive touch screen graphical remotes & touch pads, ipod controller systems, and dedicated media servers that still leave many users dissatisfied.
With this free Remote app, I believe that Apple has created a simple and elegant solution that will put a major dent in those other approaches. I just wish this solution was available 18 months ago when I installed a much more complicated, expensive, and sadly inferior system.
Many consumers already try to solve the music distribution problem by wiring their computer’s audio to amp/speakers throughout the house. But they need to go to their computer to change playlists or skip songs, which is inconvenient and just feels awkward. Even Apple TV owners probably find it awkward to have to turn their TV on just to skip a song. Now, they can control their music directly from their iPhone. You need more than one remote? Not everyone in the house has an iPhone, or somehow you don’t even have an iPhone yoursef? That’s fine… an iPod Touch has the same functionality, and for the price of the competition, you can get one for every room.
Can one little app make that much of a difference? I think it will.
