Before you get excited, I realize that not all of you know what Sonos is. Sonos is a way to control all of the music in your home (including Internet radio such as Pandora and Last FM), room by room.
Needless to say, the announcement from Sonos that you can now control all of this via your iPhone is really exciting! I personally don't use Sonos, but I have a friend that does, and he filled me on on the scoop...
I have 5 zones of Sonos in my house. And let me give you a break down of why I use this product versus others. Sonos allows me the ability to access several sources of music via a wireless hand held controller.
This controller has hard buttons, a touch sensitive scroll wheel, and a large LCD display for metadata and navigation. Now with the controller I can access some amazing things. First, I can access any shared music files on my personal computer including my itunes library. Beyond that the music selection is near limitless. I can access several on-line subscription services (free 30 day trials included with the purchase). Rhapsody, Pandora, Napster, Sirius, and 1500 pre- loaded internet radio stations, all from my handheld controller(s)! I can search via all the expected criteria, and build Pandora stations right from the controller! The Sonos system transmits this data wirelessly from a sending unit my router out to each room, or "zone". In each room is a Sonos receiver/amplifier connected to various speaker types depending on the specific room. This is where it gets fun. With the controller I can turn each zone on or off, select the music of choice, and control the volume of each zone independent of one another! I can "link" zones to have them all playing the same music, or not!
Now that I have explained the Sonos concept you are wondering where the iPhone comes in to play right? Well, enter the new Sonos controller application! Being that the controllers are a cool $400 apiece (and worth it!), how much cooler would it be to have Sonos at my finger tips from the moment I walk in to my wifi network right here on my $200 iPhone! Well, being that Sonos is wifi based, 801.11-ish, its is all possible.
Pros: I get total control of my zones on my iPhone. I love this, its brilliant.
Cons: I use Sonos as my alarm clock (thats right), but I can't control the alarm via the iPhone application.
Also, the iPhone should be a zone in itself! I could be mowing the lawn listening quite literally to almost anything I could ever want. Hopefully these changes are just an update away!
You can find out more about Sonos and other cool "entertainment solutions" by visiting Entertainment Solutions in their store or online.
