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HomePod Brings Music from iTunes to the Living Room

Posted by pudge on from the join-us-now-and-share-the-music-you'll-be-freeeee dept.

sammy.lost-angel.com writes "News.com has a story about HomePod, a device by Gloolabs that streams music wirelessly from your Mac to your living room. It's based on a Java application. The device is not very pretty, but it is priced right at $199." Not for nothing, but you can buy a used clamshell iBook for just a little bit more, and use that (along with something like iCommune, or just loading the MP3s to your library ia file sharing) ... but these guys are right, this market is going to take off, sooner or later.

7 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. not pretty? by zogger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    --was just looking at the picture of the device, not sure why it's called "not pretty". It seems more or less like any other modern device, it's not kludgy looking or anything.

    1. Re:not pretty? by transient · · Score: 4, Insightful
      ... not sure why it's called "not pretty". It seems more or less like any other modern device ...

      Let's not forget the context of the discussion. Apple's industrial design is hardly "like any other modern device". Personally, I think that thing looks like an alarm clock.

      --

      irb(main):001:0>
  2. Opposites attact. by Asterax · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Because it's large, cumbersome, a dark color, and non-symmetrical. Isn't that like the opposite of everything that Apple stands for when they are designing hardware?

  3. iJust Use My iPod by tbmaddux · · Score: 4, Insightful
    ... and connect a stereo miniplug-to-RCA adapter from it to the analog ins on my receiver.

    It gets better, we have some old multimedia Altec-Lansing "gaming" speakers (the ACS-56 ones I think) that I was going to ditch when I sold the machine they were originally connected to. With my wife's iPod, they gave us a fairly good stereo for a smaller room.

    --
    Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
  4. Re:SliMP3 - different feature set, same idea by orthogonal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For me, the big advantage of the SliMP3 is the ability to interact with the large vacuum fluorescent display via a remote control from anywhere in the room.

    But at $250, SLIMP3 sounds pretty expensive for (correct me if I'm wrong) an ethernet card and an MP3 decoder DAC chip. Plus it only plays MP3s -- I'd want to play my losslessly compressed CDs too.

    Or am I missing something?

    --
    Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
  5. iMac + Keyspan Digital Media Remote + Stereo by berniecase · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have a Keyspan Digital Media Remote unit plugged into my iMac which is then hooked up to my stereo. Sounds great, and works really well. I have a learning remote with my receiver and I was able to program it with most of the functions of the Keyspan remote.

    It works a lot better than using iHam on iRye to control the iMac.

  6. Re:Cheaper solution. by TedTodorov · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This may be funny, but really it is the most relevant post in this thread. Why in the world would you want to spend $200 on something that can be accomplished with cables???

    If your whole stereo is in the other room, instead of long speaker cables you just need a long RCA stereo cable, with a mini-jack adapter at the Mac end.

    That or just hook up your iPod to your stereo.

    Ted