Rogue Amoeba has announced Airfoil 3.2, the latest release of their audio utility which allows you to play any Mac audio over your Apple TV, AirPort Express, or other Macs. In addition to improving support for the latest generation Expresses ("including full password support and better synchronization"), the big addition with version 3.2 is remote control support. With either the Apple Remote on the Apple TV or the Keyspan Express Remote for an Express, Airfoil now allows you to play/pause and move forward/back on tracks playing through either iTunes or QuickTime Player.

The upgrade is free for registered users, while new copies of Airfoil for Mac are $25; a demo is available.

Some people may not believe that a leak on the Swiss Apple Store is an indication of actual product coming down the mountain. "The Swiss don't make mistakes like that," they say. Well, fair enough, but we now have the real deal: the Airport Express with 802.11n is on sale in the US Apple Store.

Our retail channel sources told us that the AE would be available by 3/23 or sooner, so looks like "sooner" wins. $99, supports up to 10 connected machines, AirTunes and printer sharing: works for me.

Thanks Mr. X & everyone who sent this in

It's easy to envy the Swiss, what with the fine chocolate and the neutrality and such. Now, another reason to long for the refined air of the Alps: the Swiss version of the Apple Store website is indicating availability on the supercharged 802.11n version of the Airport Express, as yet unnannounced in the US of A (translation here). With the domestic Apple Store showing 1-2 week ship times for the AE, we might well expect to see the new device next week, possibly on, I dunno, Tuesday.

An Apple-branded 802.11n router that supports AirTunes and printer sharing, all for $99? Sounds good to me. Hopefully, not too good to be true.

(Just noticing that Apple's press photo of the AE, reproduced here, shows it plugged into the top outlet -- blocking the lower socket completely. Aesthetics over functionality, anyone?)

Update 11:30 pm ET: Looks like someone got threatened with a Swiss Army knife, as the Swiss store has been normalized back to the current model of the Airport Express. You can see the translated page screenshot, as it was a few hours ago, after the break.

Thanks Thomas and James!

[via MacGeneration / Macrumors]

Do you have an AirPort Base Station? Do you enjoy applying updates? Well then, buster, today is your lucky day. Apple has just released an update by the name AirPort Base Station Update 2007-002 for Mac. You'll need any flavor of OS X 10.4 to get this update, as well as an AirPort Extreme or Express. This update, 'includes general fixes and compatibility updates for the following applications: AirPort Utility, AirPort Disk Utility, AirPort Base Station Agent.'

I know our very own David Chartier has encountered many issues with AirPort Disk, so here's hoping this update fixes it.

Curious to see what a Mac mini and an Airport Extreme look like side-by-side? Me, too. Luckily, the folks at iLounge have put up a gallery of just such a comparison.

They note that the footprint and shape of both devices is exactly the same, while the mini is slightly taller. While not in the gallery, iLounge notes that the Apple TV is a bit larger all around. They even go so far as to compare the devices' power bricks (if such a thing interests you), as well as the Apple TV setup.

A nice job by the people at iLounge. The only thing I dislike about galleries like this is they make me want to buy new hardware.

Hot on the heels of announcing a new Airport Extreme base station Apple has dropped the price on the existing Airport Express to $99. This is a great deal for those of you interesting in streaming audio only from iTunes to your home theater, as well as folks that don't have an 802.11n ready Mac.

I've had an Airport Express for well over a year now, and I am very happy with it though I might be soon phasing it out in favor of the Apple TV/Airport Extreme pairing (isn't it nice that you can stack on top of the other?).

If you're using an Intel Mac with any of Apple's AirPort base stations, you might have noticed some 'less than stellar' performance after updating to 10.4.8, as well as wonky connection problems that Apple tried issuing a support doc for. As an owner of both a MacBook and an Intel Core 2 Duo iMac, I can personally vouch that Apple's doc has a ways to go before it solves this most frustrating of wireless problems.

While troubleshooting this issue over the weekend, I came across a few new threads at Apple's discussion forums for AirPort and, more specific to my setup, the AirPort Express. In particular, this AirPort Express-related thread contains some theories and potential solutions from other users in a similar boat. Being that it is now Wednesday, I'm happy to say one of them seems to be working well for me so far, though your mileage may obviously vary. Here's a rundown of my personal setup and the remedy that's bringing some sanity back to my wireless world: typically, I roll with WPA2 Personal security, and since these sketchy connection issues began I've been playing with settings like Interference Robustness and adjusting my APE's (AirPort Express) channel, etc., but to no avail.

As it turns out, users in these forums are beginning to suspect wireless security (at least WPA, not sure about WEP, which seems to be making the ill-advised list these days anyway) as part of the problem, so I simply reset my station with no security. For the past three days, this setup has been working like a charm, though it's understandable if no security simply isn't an option for some users. To help keep our network to ourselves, I turned on 'Create a closed network' in the AirPort tab of the AirPort Admin Utility (that's Apple-speak for "hide SSID"), which simply meant I had to type in my network's name manually from the AirPort menubar item - but you should only have to do this once.

Again, YMMV, but there are a few potential solutions in Apple's discussion forums for these increasingly frustrating AirPort connectivity issues. Let's hope we don't have to keep jury-rigging our base stations for long, and Apple can issue a fix so the "it just works" reputation can actually apply to these things again.

Ok, folks, it's wild speculation time. The rumors are flying around Apple's upcoming press event. Let's take a detour into fantasy land for just a moment and pretend that all of the supposed goodies come to pass: The new 23 inch iMac, the video-streaming Airport Express and the nanos with iPod mini-like enclosures. Cost aside, which tickles your fancy the most? Would you snap up one of those nanos and say, "Scratches be damned!" I, for one, would pounce on that Airport Express. What's your choice? Vote in our poll and check back tomorrow for the results.

Which are you most likely to buy?
	23" iMac
	New nano
	Video Airport
	Enough with the rumors!
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Wow, that's a long title. Blame it on AppleInsider, who believes most -- if not all -- of those yummy goodies will be delivered to us in a nice wrapped package by The Jobs himself at next week's supposed media event. According to the rumor peddler, at the yet-unconfirmed September 12th event Jobs will take the wraps off...drumroll please:

• An $9.99-a-pop movie download service with films from at least one major studio. The idea is that the rest will see how Freakin' Amazing it is and follow suit -- a la TV shows.
• A new 23" iMac that we reported on earlier.
• A new non-scratch metal iPod nano with "at least double the storage capacity of today's models."
• What they believe is a new Airport Express-like device designed to stream video content from your Mac to your TV/home entertainment system. AI says "it's arguably been one of the most closely guarded secrets at Apple since the evolution of the first iPod digital music player."
  

That list makes this year's Macworld seem lacking.

I'm most interested in that streaming device. This isn't in the article, but imagine: plug your Airport Express to a TV and be greeted by a Front Row-like interface that streams videos/music/photos directly from your Mac, controllable by the included Apple Remote. Pipe dream? Maybe. But I guess we'll find out next week.

Check out the article for more in-depth information and AI's standard "it could be pushed back a little" disclaimer.

Airfoil and Audio Hijack Pro, the slick Mac OS X audio broadcasting and recording (respectively) software from Rogue Amoeba, have just been updated with a handy new feature: minimize to menubar. It's a new preference that (you guessed it) will allow these apps to minimize into the menubar, with some features still accessible without having the entire app open on your desktop. Rogue Amoeba has provided a demonstration video to show off this small but functional new feature.

C.K. thought we had posted on this already, but neither of us could find the post so, here goes: DownloadSquad picked up on a quiet new feature in iTunes 6.0.2: sharing video (along with audio) on a local network. Fortunately, it sounds like you don't have to do anything aside from enabling sharing in your preferences.

DLS also picked up on an odd quirk: videos purchased in 6.0.1 can't be played on 6.0.2 machines, which is surprising to me because I thought DRM'd content couldn't be played through sharing on other machines no matter what. Either way this is a great new feature, and the original digg post DLS found this at brings up all the media center and video-enabled AirPort Express rumors, which I'll just let y'all tackle in the comments.

A commenter known only as "David" on my post about the new MiniStore in iTunes noticed a great new feature that I'm surprised wasn't somehow worked into yesterday's keynote: multiple speaker streaming. iTunes can now stream music to multiple AirPort Expresses, and even keep playing the music on the originating computer.

Users have been clamoring for this ability since the day the AirPort Express hit store shelves, it finally shows up in a .0.2 iTunes update - and not a single peep about it? I guess not every new feature, option and button can claim a coveted keynote mention, but it's good to see you TUAW readers are on your toes when we're neck-deep in news ourselves.

Alright everyone, we're on the home stretch for tomorrow's keynote, and we thought it would be fun to round up predictions (hopes?) from some of the TUAW bloggers of what will be introduced. Some of these predictions might be honing in on rumors, others could simply be baseless hope for a particular product. The main point of this post is to spark some conversation about what we could see tomorrow to help pass the time and keep the shakes from setting in. So without further ado, here are TUAW's predictions for the Macworld 06 keynote:

• C.K. - black Intel iBooks running on flash memory
• Damien Barrett - a Mac mini media center with iLife '06, programmable remote
• Dave Caolo - iLife '06 including FrontRow
  
• David Chartier - a nearly-finished preview of 10.5 Leopard, with a release scheduled before Vista (like that's hard to do)
  
• Laurie A. Duncan - iWork 06 gets a major update, finally offering a viable alternative to Office for OS X
  
• Scott McNulty - Sell your songs on iTunes, publish your blog on .Mac, get your vlog streaming from Apple's servers
• Victor Agreda Jr - AirPort Express update that includes video streaming

So there you have our hopes and predictions for what we'll see on stage tomorrow. I think we all agreed that we won't see any new iPods, as some of these potential new products (like a Mac mini media center) could really carry the line they have out now. Time will only tell, so until then, feel free to discuss.