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Apple to Offer iTunes Remote Control App for iPhone and iPod Touch

Like several others, I have a fairly sophisticated home theater/sound system with speakers in multiple locations. I long ago removed the CD changer from my sound system and now use either an iPod (my A/V receiver has a direct iPod input) or my Mac Mini Home Theater PC to play music. My Mac Mini is hardwired to my local network so all of the music on all of the Macs in the house (5 in total) is available to the Mac Mini in the home theater room. Presently, I control my home theater/sound system with a PC-programmable IR/RF remote. All of my gear has IR repeaters (including the Mac Mini) and, thanks to the RF capabilities, I'm able to adjust volume, change tracks or change inputs on the A/V receiver from anywhere in the house. I can be in the garage listening to a particular playlist and kick up the volume or jump a track with a simple button press of the remote.

But what my current system doesn't let me do, is visually browse through the music remotely. I'd need an even fancier remote or video screens in each room to do that. It sure sounds like this iPhone application will solve that!!

This is VERY exciting news! Probably one of the best apps I could have hoped for for the iPhone! I hope Apple and/or 3rd party companies take it a bit farther and ultimately allow the iPhone to become a custom WiFi remote control for your entire A/V system! Imagine powering up your entire system (or just one component) via the customized touchscreen of your iPhone!

Mark
 
I'm curious to see if this will have more functionality than Remote Buddy, which I threw down $35 to have. It was a little pricey but does a whole lot of other stuff -- most of which I don't even use. I should probably look into the other features since I bought it!

Remote Buddy is certainly laggy though. I hope they'll come out with a native app soon, and I hope they don't charge me any more $$ for it either. $35 for a remote control app was a pretty tough pill to swallow.
 
guzhogi said:
anyone else worried about the possible security concerns? While I'm sure Apple thought about it, there are a lot of malicious people out there that have good hacking skills.
Click to expand...

One of the benfits of a closed operating system and app development system. This isn't WM. :rolleyes:
 
Mark Booth said:
Like several others, I have a fairly sophisticated home theater/sound system with speakers in multiple locations. I long ago removed the CD changer from my sound system and now use either an iPod (my A/V receiver has a direct iPod input) or my Mac Mini Home Theater PC to play music. My Mac Mini is hardwired to my local network so all of the music on all of the Macs in the house (5 in total) is available to the Mac Mini in the home theater room. Presently, I control my home theater/sound system with a PC-programmable IR/RF remote. All of my gear has IR repeaters (including the Mac Mini) and, thanks to the RF capabilities, I'm able to adjust volume, change tracks or change inputs on the A/V receiver from anywhere in the house. I can be in the garage listening to a particular playlist and kick up the volume or jump a track with a simple button press of the remote.


But what my current system doesn't let me do, is visually browse through the



music remotely. I'd need an even fancier remote or video screens in each room to do that. It sure sounds like this iPhone application will solve that!!

This is VERY exciting news! Probably one of the best apps I could have hoped for for the iPhone! I hope Apple and/or 3rd party companies take it a bit farther and ultimately allow the iPhone to become a custom WiFi remote control for your entire A/V system! Imagine powering up your entire system (or just one component) via the customized touchscreen of your iPhone!

Mark
Click to expand...

I agree 100% for some of us with atv and a hometheater system this is great news,as I said before I have in wall and in celing speakers threw out my home so hearing this and now controling it all from my phone is gonna be great
I would faint if u used coverflow and it showed the same on my plasma as it shows the cd cover now is fine
 
Man I will feel like I am in the :apple:Cave!

I won't have to move to change my music! This will be fun to do to other peoples music libraries and change the songs on them....if it can be done.
 
japanime said:
OK, I'm thrilled like everyone else that this remote-control app is going to be free for iPod touch owners.

However, I don't understand why it will be free.

When the iPhone apps were made available to iPod touch owners back in January, we were told that because of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Apple had no choice but to charge for the apps. The argument went that the apps were "add on" features, and the law prevented Apple from giving them away for free.

So why isn't this remote-control app, which is clearly an "add-on" feature, not subject to the same provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act?
Click to expand...

I think some apps will be included in the $9.95 upgrade.

Rocketman
 
I feel bad for people like Jonas Salling who have put their life into making a product that does this, and has been doing it well for a long time now (Salling Clicker).

However, I'm sure he'll still have some business from the folks who need more then to just control itunes, i.e. his product can control a powerpoint presentation, and can control other media players besides itunes (such as Windows Media Player).

Of course, he could always enhance his product and make it better then the free one Apple is giving away.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, and how well Apple develops this feature (sometimes they throw stuff out like the Apple TV and then practically abandon it)....
 
preferences for iPhone Remote
 

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Mark Booth said:
Like several others, I have a fairly sophisticated home theater/sound system with speakers in multiple locations. I long ago removed the CD changer from my sound system and now use either an iPod (my A/V receiver has a direct iPod input) or my Mac Mini Home Theater PC to play music. My Mac Mini is hardwired to my local network so all of the music on all of the Macs in the house (5 in total) is available to the Mac Mini in the home theater room. Presently, I control my home theater/sound system with a PC-programmable IR/RF remote. All of my gear has IR repeaters (including the Mac Mini) and, thanks to the RF capabilities, I'm able to adjust volume, change tracks or change inputs on the A/V receiver from anywhere in the house. I can be in the garage listening to a particular playlist and kick up the volume or jump a track with a simple button press of the remote.

But what my current system doesn't let me do, is visually browse through the music remotely. I'd need an even fancier remote or video screens in each room to do that. It sure sounds like this iPhone application will solve that!!

This is VERY exciting news! Probably one of the best apps I could have hoped for for the iPhone! I hope Apple and/or 3rd party companies take it a bit farther and ultimately allow the iPhone to become a custom WiFi remote control for your entire A/V system! Imagine powering up your entire system (or just one component) via the customized touchscreen of your iPhone!

Mark
Click to expand...

Exactly! A replacement for Pronto and the more expensive systems. All that is needed is a USB IR/RF and some decent development. Controlling iTunes (and maybe :apple:TV) is nice but being able to control the rest of the HT components is the ultimate goal.
 
Mark Booth said:
Like several others, I have a fairly sophisticated home theater/sound system with speakers in multiple locations. I long ago removed the CD changer from my sound system and now use either an iPod (my A/V receiver has a direct iPod input) or my Mac Mini Home Theater PC to play music. My Mac Mini is hardwired to my local network so all of the music on all of the Macs in the house (5 in total) is available to the Mac Mini in the home theater room. Presently, I control my home theater/sound system with a PC-programmable IR/RF remote. All of my gear has IR repeaters (including the Mac Mini) and, thanks to the RF capabilities, I'm able to adjust volume, change tracks or change inputs on the A/V receiver from anywhere in the house. I can be in the garage listening to a particular playlist and kick up the volume or jump a track with a simple button press of the remote.

But what my current system doesn't let me do, is visually browse through the music remotely. I'd need an even fancier remote or video screens in each room to do that. It sure sounds like this iPhone application will solve that!!

This is VERY exciting news! Probably one of the best apps I could have hoped for for the iPhone! I hope Apple and/or 3rd party companies take it a bit farther and ultimately allow the iPhone to become a custom WiFi remote control for your entire A/V system! Imagine powering up your entire system (or just one component) via the customized touchscreen of your iPhone!

Mark
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Very similar situation here. I can't wait for this app!
 
Although this is cool...

what is even cooler is that this means Apple is definitely going to hold some sort of media event for the launch where they bring out new iphone apps which they built in house.

Someone said a while back in the forums about the possibility of them launching a better camera app (with say, the ability to record video) on the day to make people go even more gaga.

Here's hoping.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

it would seem pretty easy to add limited wifi capabilities to a nano, allowing it to do the same thing. New iPod nano = nano + wifi remote but no touchscreen.
 
Great news

I've been asking for this for a while. I will probably get an iPhone or a Touch now! (to be fair, I was pretty close anyway)

I hope it will be possible to switch remote speakers, or do stuff like control the volume of each one independently (although the latter would be a new feature to iTunes). Perhaps iTunes will get Sonos-like features eventually, like different music to different remote speakers?

I also hope this app will control Keynote, with presenter notes, etc - that would be neat.
 
Sonos Killer

Sonos must be pretty upset today with this announcement. Now people can get the functionality of their sonos system without having to shell out hundreds of dollars per player.

The only advantage sonos still has is the ability to play subscription music content (Rhapsody, Napster, Pandora, etc...) something Apple can easily add if it makes $ense.

Also, since iphone can talk to itunes now, presumably over wifi... does that mean we now have TCP/IP access into itunes to be able to control it remotely from other devices?

I've been using a keyspan usb dongle plugged in to an airport extreme to enable remote control of itunes from my universal remote for a while now. If I can just give it the ip and port of itunes and have it control it that way, that would be sweet.
 
Features

The biggest feature I could think of that would make the app a must-have would be tying the GPS into the AirTunes system.

Use GPS to map out rooms in your house, and as you walk from room to room, it knows where you are and plays music through those speakers. So you could be walking around your house and always have the music playing no matter where you are.

Also, I'm not sure if this is implied in the ReadMe, but if you pick the song from your iPhone and then it plays via AirTunes. That would be the first fully functional remote (that I know of).
 
jmadlena said:
The biggest feature I could think of that would make the app a must-have would be tying the GPS into the AirTunes system.

Use GPS to map out rooms in your house, and as you walk from room to room, it knows where you are and plays music through those speakers. So you could be walking around your house and always have the music playing no matter where you are.

Also, I'm not sure if this is implied in the ReadMe, but if you pick the song from your iPhone and then it plays via AirTunes. That would be the first fully functional remote (that I know of).
Click to expand...

Good luck getting a GPS lock in a building. :rolleyes:
 
I've been waiting for something like this from :apple: for ages..........

Awesome!!!!!!!!!!:D

Just got to be so much better than the 3rd Party apps i've looked at - I've always been a little unsure of setting up a 'server' with third party software - perhaps I'm just paranoid.......
 
An iPhone as a remote but NO "cut and paste?"

I don't get it! Apple can turn their iPhone into a remote control for iTunes (something that is nice but not everyone needs), yet still after an entire year they can't include "cut and paste" which is a fundamental part of every computer operation and was included on the first 128k Macintosh over 20 years ago and on every Palm Pilot!! If Apple is serious about making this the next platform they need to fix this NOW! Not wait another year to make it happen!!
 
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