This is awesome. It basically turns our iPod Touch or iPhone into an airport express -- at least, as far as audio-streaming goes.
Now I can plug my Touch into my living room stereo system and pipe in music from the iMac in my office (which has 20,000+ songs, instead of the paltry selection of 4 GBs my Touch has). Great for parties -- keep the computer away from the drinks, but the music piping into the room.
I actually bought my Airport Express specifically for this type of thing. And I was thinking about buying a second one, so I didn't have to keep moving the Express around the house depending on where I wanted to stream music too. So the Airfoil iPhone App is going to save me some $$.
It also allows you, theoretically, to turn any set of headphones into a semi-wireless system -- something that even an Airport Express can't help with. e.g., I could plug headphones into my iPod Touch, and then walk around the house or lie in bed or whatever -- while listening to audio streaming from my iMac, which could include streaming radio, live TV shows via Eye TV, movies playing in VLC, etc . . . A great solution for when you don't want to disturb other people in the house. And, really, if you've looked at wireless headset solutions -- whether they broadcast from your computer over wifi, radio frequencies, or blue tooth -- they tend to be clunky affairs. This Airfoil-to-iPhone audio solution is much more elegant.
One problem I'm anticipating: Since we can't run background apps on non-jailbroken iPhones/Touches, then I'm guessing that this means we won't be able to run the Airfoil Speakers app at the same time as the iTunes Remote app or the VLC Remote app. This is a real shame, since having full Remote control capabilities would make Airfoil Speakers much more convenient for multi-room audio-streaming usage.
Anyway, I haven't actually tried it out yet. Will be interesting to see how well it works, and if Airfoil is able to keep the audio in sync with any video that might be playing on the computer -- it usually works great with the Draft-N Airport Express, but I wonder if my 1st generation Touch has enough enough power to handle it. The Touches and iPhones are all Draft-G, right? So that could create more lag time and glitches in the streaming?
Regardless -- well worth a try, since it's a free App and I already own a copy of Airfoil.
