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A few weeks ago, we brought you news about Remote Buddy. It's a neat little application that allows you to control almost anything on your Mac mini with the Apple Remote. The response to an application offering this kind of functionality was pretty enthusiastic, so I wanted to let you know about three other applications in the same category. They are iRed Lite, Mira and Sofa Control. You can learn more about each one of these applications down below. So if you're looking to get more out of your Apple Remote, I suggest you download them and give them a try. Remote Buddy "Remote Buddy provides you with a one stop interface that allows you to control almost anything on your Mac just with the remote control. Besides tools that allow you to emulate keyboard and mouse, eject CDs, terminate applications and much more, Remote Buddy also can control applications directly. It does this through specialized plugins, so called Behaviors. Already included with Remote Buddy are Behaviours for iTunes, Keynote 3, PowerPoint, Photo Booth, QuickTime Player, EyeTV 2, DVD Player, VLC Media Player, Real Player, Adobe Reader, Acrobat Pro, CoverFlow, Quinn, GarageBand, NetNewsWire, MPlayer OSX, Expose and many more. For your convenience, Remote Buddy has a set of intelligent algorithms that can automatically choose the best fitting behavior for the currently running applications. Plus a table of the active mapping and the behaviors menu is always just a press of the Menu button away." Download Details:   Developer: IOSPIRIT   License: Demo   Price: $12.70   System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 or later Sofa Control "Apple ships a Remote Control with any new Mac. The pre-installed functionality is limited to control just a couple of applications. Sofa Control breaks this limit. With Sofa Control you are able to control any application on your Mac and trigger the actions you like. Sofa Control gives the control back to you. Sofa Control uses AppleScript to control any application installed on your Mac. It's full extendible and adoptable by the end user with their own scripts. Sofa Control provides specially designed "sofa suitable" user interface elements to choose files and to bring up menus. A special application switcher makes it easy to switch between applications. Sofa Control ships with support for a number of applications like Eye TV, Preview, iTunes, Adobe Reader, Keynote, VLC, Quicktime Player, Powerpoint, NetNewsWire, and more. A download area for new and updated scripts is provided on the product's website." Download Details:   Developer: CASE Apps   License: Demo   Price: $9.99   System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 or later iRed Lite "iRed Lite (iRL) was made for all Macs equipped with an Apple Remote, but may be used by keyboard or mouse as well. It allows you to control the basic functions of applications like iTunes, iPhoto, PowerPoint or Keynote from remote. Examples for these apps as well as for others are provided with the iRL package. iRL does not interfere with Front Row, but supplements it. A visual feedback of iRL is always only a click away: press Menu on your Apple Remote and you'll get an full screen or a resizable on-screen menu to show you what kind of action an Apple Remote button will cause. Switching between applications or control scenarios is also done in a snap: hold Menu for a second and you can switch between "layers" of controls. Optional audio feedback lets you operate iRL even without sight. iRL is highly customizable with a built-in Editor, which features a simple mode as well as an expert mode and it is only at its beginning: Themes for on-screen menus as well as an

Mac OS X Server is Apple's UNIX server operating system. Based on the same architecture as Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server includes additional services, applications and administration tools for managing and deploying servers. Mac OS X Server is the operating system included on Xserve, Apple's 1U rack mount server. Mac OS X Server is also sold separately for use on Apple desktop computers including Mac Pro, iMac and Mac mini. Mac OS X Server is commonly found in small business, education and large enterprise organizations.

mira Personal Control for Your Apple Remote™ Designed exclusively for the Apple® Remote, Mira takes it beyond Front Row and gives you personal control for any application, on any Mac®. The Apple Remote on any Mac! Remote enable your G3, G4, G5 or Mac Pro today Built-in, Manta TR1, Keyspan & MCE 2005 receivers Works with any USB Mac running Mac OS 10.4+ Order Manta TR1 online now - special bundle price     Friendly, Attractive, Easy & Compatible The Apple Remote will let you control your Mac from up to 33 feet (10 meters) away. Its signal will even bounce off walls, ceilings and furniture so you don't have to point right at the computer. Mira drops into your System Preferences and provides an easy interface to change button settings for all your applications. Settings are made in a familiar profile fashion for individual applications and over 60 profiles are already built-in. Of course you can change any of them as well as add unlimited of your own.   Best of all, you don't have to fiddle around with Mira to make it work, it's automatic! The corrrect settings are immediately available when using any application.   Easily Open Your Favorite Programs Why limit yourself to opening only Front Row when Mira provides a giant menu that you can see across the room? The Mira Launch Menu lets you decide what appears inside it and how it should look. It's not limited to applications either, you can launch documents and AppleScripts too.   Mira is for Everyone Just point and click one of the on-screen buttons to select what it should do. Mira has been designed to be powerful, yet compact and extremely easy to use. You don't have to know anything about programming or wait for anyone else to create scripts. If you know how to use the keyboard and a mouse, you can use Mira right away to control any program. A full-featured built-in help book takes you through the whole program and Help Tags offer assistance within the interface. Take a look at the full list of features and screenshots for much more information. Built-In IR receiver on newer Mac models Manta TR1 & MCE/eHome 2005 IR Receivers for All Macs

© Amit Singh

January 2009

the installer creates the first user account. This is the important bit: it is an administration account – call it “Administrator” or something like that and create another for yourself afterwards (if you’re a UNIX head, this is not root, which is disabled).

Create your own Applications folder inside your home directory (Mac OS X will change the icon accordingly) and try out new stuff in there.

drag the entire Applications folder to the right-hand side of the Dock, forming what Apple calls a “stack”