iTunes
Sunday, November 30th, 2008
by lepton
AirMote, the Remote Control application for the iPhone and iPod Touch, has reduced its price from $4.99 to $2.99 for a limited time.
AirMote lets you watch video, listen to music, and control presentations on your computer, using your iPhone or iPod Touch as the remote control. Remote control layouts are built-in, set up for controlling applications like Front Row, Keynote, iTunes, iPhoto, QuickTime Player, and similar media players. Other layouts take advantage of Apple’s Mouse Keys, Full Keyboard Access, and VoiceOver features.
AirMote is fully customizable, so it can command your computer in all sorts of ways. You can make your own buttons that send what you want, and put the buttons onto remote control layouts you set up. You can have as many screens as you like, and switch between them quickly, round-robin style.
For more information, click these links:
Thursday, November 6th, 2008
by lepton
My newest application is out on the iTunes App Store!
AirMote lets you watch video, listen to music, and control presentations on your Macintosh, using your iPhone or iPod Touch as the remote control.
Several remote control layouts are built-in, set up for controlling applications like Front Row, Keynote, iTunes, iPhoto, QuickTime Player, and similar media players. Other layouts take advantage of Apple’s Mouse Keys, Full Keyboard Access, and VoiceOver features.
AirMote is fully customizable, so it can command your computer in all sorts of ways. It does it by sending keystrokes to your computer. You can make your own buttons that send what you want, and put the buttons onto remote control layouts you set up. You can only have up to twelve buttons on screen at once, but you can have as many screens as you like, and switch between them quickly, round-robin style.
The basic idea is you can sit back and watch movies, show photos, listen to podcasts and music around the house, or stand up and give a presentation, or demonstrate your software to your audience from across a conference room or auditorium, with your trusty handheld as the remote control.
AirMote uses VNC protocols every recent Macintosh can understand. You have to turn on permission and set a password in your Mac’s System Preferences > Sharing pane, then AirMote can make the connection over the WiFi LAN, or even across the Internet using WiFi or the cellular data network.
Here are some links:
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
by lepton
Now that the problem with synchronizing app updates between the iPhone App Store application and the Mac’s iTunes application is cured with OS 2.1, it doesn’t matter which you use to update your iPhone applications. But I’ve found using the iPhone’s App Store application is more fun.
On iTunes, you can click the Applications item in the left column to see the iPhone applications you’ve downloaded. Near the bottom of the screen, you can click a link that checks to see is any of the apps have updates, and then you can download the updates. You can also click on one of the app icons that have updates to go to the app’s page in the App store. The description there will include a section that explains what changes are in the update.
In the App Store application on the iPhone itself, this whole thing seems more fun, is handier, and perhaps shows more informative. Touching the Updates tab at the bottom of the screen takes you to an update section that automatically checks the store for updates. Available updates are listed on the screen, and if you touch one, it goes to a special screen that shows you what is new in the update, without showing you the entire main screen for the app with its old information. And of course another touch and perhaps a password entry gets the update.
This seems more streamlined, and it all happens on the phone, wherever I am, without having to sync. I have a lot of apps on my phone, and it’s actually exciting to check a couple of times a day to see if anything new is coming in! Who’d have thunk it!
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
by lepton
Apple iTunes version 8 added a new Album Cover Grid View that shows many album covers, but doesn’t list the songs. Want the iTunes 7 style Album view back? It’s still there, but hidden. Here’s how to get it.
The View control near the upper right corner of the iTunes window controls the main view type for your music.
iTunes View Control
The middle of the control used to show an Album view that had the album cover on the left side, and a list of songs to the right of the cover. This was replaced by the new Album Grid view in iTunes 8. The grid view simply shows all the album covers so you can scan through them quickly. The old Album view is still available.
To see the old Album view, switch to the List view, which appears when you click on the left part of the iTunes View Control. Now, in the very leftmost column header, where the tunes are numbered, there is a tiny triangle. Click it, and it toggles between the List view and the old Album view!
iTunes old Album View
In this picture, you can see the triangle to the left of the word “Artwork”. It toggles between List and Album views.
