Tired of having to plug in your iPhone or iPod touch to a set of speakers? Wish you could stream your iTunes tracks from your computer to the speakers in your living room? Well, in case you didn’t know, that’s what Apple’s AirPlay feature is for. iPhone or computer connected to a Wi-fi network, AirPlay-supporting speakers connected to the same network, press play, music streams from source to speakers. Music-loving owner who hates wires, now happy. You probably already own an iOS device and a PC or Mac loaded with the latest version of iTunes. All you need now is something like this: the iHome iW1, which is a wireless speaker that supports Apple’s AirPlay tech.
So here’s the situation: you’ve already spent a lot of money through the years for that awesome hi-fi stereo in your living room. The problem is that all your music is now sitting in your computer hard drive, and you have no way to bridge the gap. You could, of course, pick up an inexpensive FM transmitter that’ll let your stereo tune in to a frequency that the kit tosses out, but don’t believe what’s on the box… audio quality on those is basically crappy. Here’s another solution: the playGo USB. It’s basically a two-piece kit – one part plugs to your computer’s USB port, while the other connects to your stereo system – that’ll let you stream music wirelessly from your computer to your stereo or hi-fi speakers.
The iLuv ArtStation Pro, or the iMM514, is basically an iPad dock, but with a rather neat twist: it comes with a hinged arm that’ll let you tilt and swivel the tablet to get you the perfect angle for either multimedia use or with a keyboard accessory if you want it to look like a iMac G4 clone… or at least a really boxy ripoff of Apple’s iconic desktop.
There are docks made for the iPhone and iPod touch, and docks that’ll let you park either an iPhone or an iPad. But if you own an iPad and an iPhone and ever found yourself having to decide whether to charge or play content from one or the other, wouldn’t you want a speaker dock that’ll let you park both devices at the same time? We know… that sounds a little silly. Not to mention petty, considering the fact that these devices come with a charger, you can always solve playback source issues with a stereo cable, and there are a lot of other problems you could be wasting brain cells on right now. But just in case you were interested in a dock that rocks dual slots for handling both an iPad and an iPhone/iPod touch, JVC’s got you covered.
JBL has just unveiled the On Air, which is basically a speaker-dock… another one of those made-for-Apple speaker docks that are quickly becoming common these days. The features? You can probably enumerate the basics with your eyes closed: iPhone / iPod charging dock, clock radio functions with dual alarms and FM tuner, enhanced with RDS support that enables it to display station data on the screen. So what makes it different? For starters, the design is pretty unique. Or at least relatively unique since we’ve already seen the design on the On Time, which is basically another one of those made-for-Apple speaker docks. So what’s new? Built-in wireless streaming, buddy. This speaker dock was designed to work with Apple’s AirPlay feature, which will let you wirelessly stream music from any computer running iTunes 10.1 (or later), or from any iOS-running device (iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch) running on iOS 4.2. Which makes this kit awesome if you have a number of computers and iOS devices, and you don’t want to have to move and plug in a set of speakers to each and every one of them just to listen to your 80’s Disco Mix.
