Interesting that this article should bring up these two together.

IMHO, the iPhone remote is an absolute Sonos killer. I have been on the fence since the Sonos came out about buying it, because of the price to outfit my sprawling house.

No more. With the iPhone Remote app, I have a much better system for a far lower price.

1) Each room costs < $200 to add. Any old Airport Express (buy the previous gen on eBay) + a good set of powered speakers is all I need to add another room.

2) It's already sync'd with my master music library, which is sync'd with all my iPods and my Apple TV. No setup, no issues.

3) It supports purchased iTunes music.

There are certainly some things Sonos does better, but I either don't care (Rhapsody) or I'm willing to live with it (more complex volume level balancing/power-on power-off).

I don't think it's an accident that Sonos has had a flurry of promotions since the Apple iPhone Remote arrived.

I agree that the Apple Remote application on an iPhone or iPod Touch is dramatically better than the existing Sonos Controller, and has additional advantages due to being able to talk directly to iTunes (which the Sonos system cannot do, it simply reads the iTunes Library files), but don't count Sonos out just yet. While the AirPort Express is cheaper than a Sonos ZonePlayer, you have to add an amplifier or self-powered speakers to the AirPort. The ZonePlayer 120, on the other hand, can drive any standard set of speakers, all by itself (that's why it costs more, the built-in amp). This is a pretty big advantage if you want to play your music over higher quality speakers, or in a larger room that self-powered speakers just won't fill. And if your rooms are connected sonically (that is, while in one room you can hear music playing in other rooms), you'll quickly be driven mad by the slightly-out-of-sync music streams coming out of the AirPort Expresses. You'll be forced to play different playlists in each room. Which is fine for personal listening, but when you have a party it's nice to have one soundtrack all through the house. The Sonos can do that without the sync problem, the AirPort solution cannot. Again, for many uses the Apple-based solution is the better option. But there are definitely uses where the AirPort-based system just doesn't work, and the Sonos handles those uses quite well. Of course, at some point Apple could fix the sync problem, and add the concept of Zones -- probably easily done through a software update -- and then Sonos is cooked.