The Apple Remote has become de rigeur on all new shipping Macs, so it’s no surprise that Macheads are looking for ways to extend the little device’s use. It may only have a handful of buttons, but it’s big on possibilities.
Last week, I mentioned Martin Kahr’s Remote Control, which has now been updated to version 0.7 and renamed Sofa Control. The new version has a much smoother interface, and a bunch of new tricks up its metaphorical sleeve. Once you launch the app, for exmaple, it pops you right into a tutorial on all of its many uses via a Keynote-style slideshow in Preview.
For a somewhat more manual approach, there’s also The American Balloon’s new Telekinesis. Simply enough, it lets you map any button the Apple Remote to any keystroke. That’s it. You can assign key combinations for both pressing and holding each button on the remote (except the Volume Up/Down buttons) via popup menus in the application. So, for example, should you want to astound people by checking your Mail via your remote, feel free to do so. Of course, you’ll probably need to make the font way bigger if you’re all the way on the couch.
What’s next for the Apple Remote? Personally, I’m waiting for somebody to turn it into a Taser.
Cool! Built-in conrol of NetNewsWire is great, though holding down buttons does not make it automatically go through items like holding down a keyboard button does.