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First Look: AirPhones Turns Your iPhone Into Wireless Headphones

Submitted by Michael Johnston on February 20, 2009 - 10:31pm.
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Sifting through our mountain of new iPhone applications, we found something really cool today. Yesterday the folks at smashart released AirPhones [App Store], a unique app that turns your iPhone into a wireless sound device for your computer. The app itself is fairly straight forward; open it up and sound starts streaming over. A companion app running on your Mac or PC shows up as a sound device which then sends your audio over WiFi to the AirPhones iPhone app.

The cool thing about AirPhones is that it doesn't just stream audio from a specific application. Because the companion app acts as a sound device, you can stream any audio from your computer. This could be iTunes, a DVD, YouTube videos, you name it. The audio level can be set either from your computer (since it's an audio device) or from the AirPhones app on your iPhone.

Keep in mind that AirPhones does not have an iTunes controller built in. It's set up to simply stream audio from your computer.

Because it requires the companion desktop app, it just streams audio from Intel Macs. They plan to bring the desktop portion to Windows and PowerPC Macs soon. Linux users will likely have to wait even longer. Check out AirPhonesApp.com for more info on that.

AirPhones is available now for $4.99 in the App Store [App Store]. We've tried it and really like it so far. We'll have a full review up soon.

Submitted by Shutterrelease on February 21, 2009 - 3:11pm.
Hey, this is cool. It went up a dollar though. It's now $4.99.

Submitted by Kevin Dunahee on February 21, 2009 - 4:24pm.
Am I missing something here? This app lets me plug my headphones into my phone instead of the computer I'm sitting at? I guess if I plan on sitting more than 3 ft away from the computer it makes sense. Again, what is the obvious application for this that I'm not seeing?

Submitted by jwlussow on February 21, 2009 - 8:35pm.
Maybe I'm not sitting at the computer when I'm streaming. Maybe I'm walking around the house or in another room. Seems pretty cool to me.

Submitted by Beast on February 21, 2009 - 10:05pm.
It's cheaper than an Airport Express Base Station.

Submitted by Kevin Dunahee on February 21, 2009 - 10:09pm.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jwlussow View Post
Maybe I'm not sitting at the computer when I'm streaming. Maybe I'm walking around the house or in another room. Seems pretty cool to me.
Ok. So you are walking around different rooms of the house. You obviously aren't watching a video. Why not just take advantage of the fact that you can put audio content onto your phone? Why are you streaming it? Yarg. I is so confused.

hmmm...

Submitted by steiney on February 23, 2009 - 1:03pm.
honestly, i can agree with both points of view on this one. for some, i can understand it seeming pretty cool, and for others i can understand how it can seem useless. i'd say i'm somewhere in the middle.

Submitted by Kevin Dunahee on February 23, 2009 - 2:14pm.
Yeah. No doubt it is very cool in concept. I just fail at seeing any practical use for it. I would imagine that once in a blue moon, one might have a bizarre scenario where they would need to have a streaming device in a moment's notice, but it seems so unlikely. Again...unless I'm missing something obvious.