AirPhones turns your iPhone or touch into a wireless speaker

AirPhones is an interesting application for your iPhone or iPod touch that turns your mobile device into a set of wireless headphones. The idea is similar to Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil, but instead of routing audio from your Mac to an Airport Express, AirPhones sends your Mac's audio to your iPhone or touch connected to the same WiFi network.

For this to work you have to install the free Mac server application. It adds an additional output device to your Sound preferences pane. Once that's installed on your Mac you'll also need the mobile application (iTunes link) installed on your iPhone or iPod touch. After they're connected through the same network, your handheld should play your Mac's sound output.

This actually strikes me as a great idea. I spend a lot of time at my work desk listening to music through headphones and I inevitably get tangled up in the cord. My main concern, I suppose, would be running down my iPhone's battery, but that may be worth it to get rid of that cord.

AirPhone is $4.99 from the iTunes Store. You'll also need to download the server application from smashart. Unfortunately, the server app is Intel only, but they're promising both a Universal binary and a Windows version in the future.

[via 9 to 5 Mac]