James Andrews

Today I was reading twitter when @mongey91 mentioned his father being impressed with an application called Airmouse on the iPhone.  I had not heard of Airmouse, so I poked around the Apple Application store, and found the application.  First off it’s not a free application.  It’s US$5.99.  What Airmouse does, is it allows your iPhone to act as a remote mouse and keyboard for your Mac or PC.   At first glance I can see a lot of uses for the application.  First would be presentation at conferences.  According to the video on the website it can be used just like a mouse pointer move up it moves up, down and it moves down.  Multimedia PCs need keyboards and mice so you can access your files.  Why not just sit down, turn on Airmouse turn the tuner to the PC and let it go.  Of even as an alternative to a TV in the bedroom.  Control your computer to watch a movie from your bed, no extra remote needed.

I downloaded the server and installed it on my 1st gen Macbook.  Server installs easily, and did not require administrative privileges which was nice surprise.  Next I went to iTMS and payed my $5.99 downloaded, and synchronized it onto 1st gen iPhone.  I am all set and ready to go.

First of is the ability to type which i am doing right now from the iPhone. It is neat if you need to rename a video file on your media PC.  The iPhone application has 2 interfaces.

The default is pointer style, with the ability turn it into trackpad style.  I’m going to talk about trackpad style first.  When you start the application you will be in pointer style mode.  Clicking on the icon in the upper right hand corner put you into trackpad mode.  The trackpad on top and they keyboard on the bottom of the iPhone screen.  As you might expect it is designed to act like the trackpad on your computer.   If you click anywhere on the trackpad part of the screen and hold your mouse moves, and the application is designed so that if you track over the keyboard it will stay in mouse mode until you release.  Which is pretty handy.   It has 3 mouse buttons between the keyboard and trackpad.  One for left one for center, and one for right.  They will act just like if you were using the same buttons on your computer.   The center also has up and down arrows, so you can use it like a scroll wheel.  Don’t want to use the button as a scroll wheel?  That’s fine, you don’t have too, 2 finger drags on the track pad also work.  Airmouse definitely has the trackpad working well, and would be hard to improve on.

Pointer mode has 4 buttons.  left, right center bottom and center top.  The left and right act just like the left and right buttons of a normal mouse.  The center bottom is like the center on your normal mouse.  The difference is because there is no “tracking” with your fingers on the track pad, holding the buttons and waving the iPhone up and down and left and right acts as you moving the mouse.  The top center button is what you use when you just want to move the mouse without the effects of clicking on a mouse button.  Overall with my 1st gen iPhone the tracking doesn’t seem to work well, but maybe I just need to fidget with the settings some more.

Airmouse also has 3 unique displays.  Media, Web, and “hot keys”.  The media page gives you access to iTunes.   Web connects me to Safari, but it may as well work with your default browser.  The “hot keys” allows you access to your “function keys” and also some missing keys.  All very well implemented and useful.

Still I think it’s a great little application, and once I get my Mac mini for my living room next year I’ll be using it quite often.  I give it 4 out of 5 mice.  If you would like to learn more visit their website.