Hi! I’ve decided to post an eMail on this subject for a variety of reasons, the main being that there seems to be a myth doing the rounds, the myth says that its impossible! to play third party content such as different audio file formats etc on an iPhone or other IOS devices.
This is - to a major extent - true if you’re using say the iPhone’s “Music Player” App. This - to me at least - is not a big issue as every operating system with its built-in features does have its limitations, you cannot - as far as I know - play FLAC files in Windows Media Player for example unless you use a third party plug-in so essentially we’re referring to the same type of problem but with different operating systems. The other annoyance with IOS is that - unless you have an adapter available from Apple - you cannot copy your music files from say your computer over a USB connection to a particular folder on your iPhone of your choosing but again, there are ways around that snag. Okay so its best not to focus on what can’t be done and focus on what can be done so let’s do that with IOS. The first App you’ll need is a Player and there are several good one’s out there but for the sake of simplicity let’s focus on two, oOplayer and File Browser, both do exactly what their names suggest. With both you can set up remote locations such as a Dropbox account, computer on a local or remote network, UPNP/DLNA device and so on, when configured you can then select what files you wish to hear or view. Now supposing you want to take your iPhone away from any network and want your favourite music to accompany you? No problem as both the aforementioned Apps will allow you to download your Music from a specific point - computer, Dropbox account etc - right to a folder on your iPhone where you can browse, play and manipulate your files to your hearts content. So this brings us to another possibly challenging topic, iPhones have only so much storage space so what if you have thousands upon thousands of files you wish to access at any one time or supposing your music collection is in a Lossless format that takes up a good deal of space? If this is the case then its time to look at a pocket sized hard drive with a built-in Wi-Fi network, I mentioned my Skyshare drive towards the end of last week and this drive has its own built-in Wi-Fi network which the iPhone can connect to. Once connected the Apps I mentioned earlier - oOplayer and File Browser - have direct access to the drive thus the content you’ve placed too the drive. The Skyshare drive on the surface looks like any other portable hard drive, it has a USB port on the back for connection to a computer with a USB 3.0 port for the copying and manipulation of content, you can also use the Wi-Fi abilities of the drive for copying/manipulating files though this process is considerably slower when compared to USB 3.0 or even 2.
