iPhone as music server remote control

Would it matter which mac mini you bought if you were going to hook up external hard drives? I might pick one up cheap{ and no tax} on ebay. You don't need bluetooth or anything special to use the itouch do you?

Streetdaddy,
yes you need bluetooth for the macmini/itouch connection. iTouch as a remote for playback works BUT getting the music on the server, manipulating the music, iTunes, etc requires a monitor and keyboard. A cheaper version of the same thing would be to buy an old Palm Pilot and get Salling Clicker software.

My solution to this will likely be iTouch for remote (because I can use it elsewhere too), and unplugging the MacMini from the stereo and plugging it in elsewhere to deal with the rest when the need arises (either that or grab one of those great-looking new Appple wireless keyboards and and a DVI/HDMI adaptor and plug it into the TV.

Tbone,
The palm is definately not 1/2 as cool as the itouch. The itouch looks sooo much better than an old crappy palm pilot.

I geuss i'm a litlle confused. Say, if you want to play your playlists, you can't just grab your itouch and control itunes? You need a seperate keyboard monitor?

What is the itouch for then? Also, what else can you do with the itouch?

Playback is on the iPod Touch. If you want to record, make new playlists, or otherwise manipulate iTunes, you would need a keyboard (and something to see what you were manipulating presumably).

The iPod Touch is really cool. I got one over the weekend and finished setting it up last night. It is great. As an ipod, it is very ergonomic, and the screen (combined with the zoom-in and zoom-out touchscreen "push-pull" technology) makes it easy to deal with things like webpages (and my web-based email).

I will try to manipulate iTunes on the Mac when I have a free moment later this week.

As to the what else... it has wifi connectivity and the Safari browser (you could theoretically control your complete iTunes implementation on the iPod Touch if you downloaded directly over the wifi connection and did not have a PC but space is limited to 16GB for the moment). Like the more recent iPods it has video, photo, and music capability with a big screen. It also has a few other apps and there are a bunch more which are downloadable (some games, some mini apps) and given what is supposed to become a more open architecture, I expect more out of it going forward.

And the touchscreen is about the coolest thing going...