Bang & Olufsen in free app shocker!
Danish company Bang & Olufsen has released a free app that allows you to control your (very expensive) A/V gear.
- Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
If you've ever walked into a Bang & Olufsen store you'll know that the Danish company is renowned for two things: minimalism, and exorbitant pricing. However, there is a third thing. By the company's own admission it has been a "closed shop" when it comes to systems such as media servers and, until now, mobile apps. But closed shops are all the rage, seemingly.
But with the release of the Bang & Olufsen BeoLink app the company aims to integrate its products with third-party automation from the likes of Control4 and Crestron. In a nutshell, it's a Wi-Fi remote control that interfaces between the B&O gear and the automation equipment in your home. Neither of which is cheap.
Best of all, the app is free! While we talked at length on this week's podcast about the chicken and egg nature of providing a free app to control hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment I think this can only be a good thing.
While B&O was cagey about the details, it did say that the app will be available on other platforms by the end of the year. If this sounds like something for you, you can have a poke around in the iPhone version's innards which can be found here.