Photos: Turning a Mac into an iPod speaker

by ZDNet Author | July 20, 2006 2:45pm PDT | Image 10 of 11

Finally, the payoff: "Off to the beach. The perfect location to put the iPod Hi-Fi mini through a tough session of music and sun."

The project caught the eye of folks on Slashdot, the news-for-nerds site. Some thought it wasn't nearly geeky enough, while others relished the cleverness.

A thumbs-down Slashdot post: "It gave me no clue of what he had done, except for hollowing out a old MAC, adding an amplifier and such...How did he interface to the iPod? Does the thing control the iPod, or just output the sound? I guess the latter, that it is just a fancy set of speakers with a 3.5mm jack to connect it to any portable equipment with a headset output. It's not really innovative even. What would have been innovative was if he'd made a interface to control the iPod."

And a thumbs-up Slashdot opinion: "This is a damn neat hack. Yes, it's probably not as high-quality audio as a set of pro-grade speakers costing hundreds of dollars, but you're listening to an iPod full of compressed, lossy songs, so stop whining. This is a fun way to recycle old hardware cases (unless you have some other pressing need for a Macplus case, perhaps?) into a piece of high geek-factor functional art."

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