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
Jeff Johnson on 05 Oct 08Like an overinflated pilates ball, Apple's long-standing culture of secrecy has sprung a few leaks. The tight-lipped corporate giant recently made a move toward transparency when it lifted its iPhone non-disclosure agreement. The unpopular policy prohibited iPhone application developers from discussing their coding techniques. Lifting the NDA may hurt Apple by exposing the inner workings of the iPhone to competitors like Google and Nokia. But increasingly open competitors and disgruntled developers may have forced Apple's hand.
