Recently, Squirrels (the same folks who bring you such great apps as Reflector 2 and AirParrot 2) announced a new Mac (and Windows) app called DropStream. The $9.99 app has one goal in life: to make streaming of audio to Apple TV and Chromecast as easy as possible. Does it accomplish that goal? Read on for a full review…
The idea behind DropStream is that you just drag and drop a movie, music or picture file to start streaming. You can create playlists, choose or change a destination device (Apple TV, Google Chromecast, AirPlay-enabled speakers or Reflector 2), turn on subtitles, and change tracks from one easy to use Mac app.
Installing DropStream is quick and easy, but you will need to do two things. First, you’ll want to go into System Preferences > Security & Privacy and allow the app make changes to the system. If you don’t do this, you may end up rebooting your Mac over and over… Second, you’ll need to reboot your Mac twice — once for the driver install, and a second time for a driver update.
Once DropStream is installed, it asks you to add a destination. This can be any of those device I mentioned above, and DropStream does a very good job of identifying those devices quickly. If you have a lot of receivers on a large network — like at a school or business — you can force DropStream to do a more thorough search. With a click, you know that you’re beginning to stream a file to a specific device as the name of the device is displayed.
But in order to make it all possible, Apple had to kill the home button, a popular all-purpose navigation tool. Much like the company’s move to nix the 3.5-mm headphone jack on the iPhone 7, this decision was driven by “looking to the future,” says Jonathan Ive, Apple’s chief design officer. “I actually think the path of holding onto features that have been effective, whatever the cost, is a path that leads to failure.” At $999, the X is also the most expensive iPhone yet. “As you would expect,” Ive says, “there’s a financial consequence to integrating the sheer amount of processing power into such a small device.”
It’s easy to imagine a future iteration with a screen that wraps around the entire device, or a camera that can detect gestures. But for now, Ive and Riccio won’t divulge specific plans. “We have a clear vision” for the next generation of iPhones, says Ive. The X is “in some sense a completion of a chapter.
