International Mac Podcast

I was watching the most recent Macworld video podcasts where they were talking about using a Mac Mini as a home theater. They mentioned an app in the video called Air Mouse Pro (iTunes link).

Air Mouse Pro is an app which essentially turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a trackpad-style mouse for your Mac, or PC. The app uses WiFi to connect to your desktop. I had success connecting to my MacBook both through the existing wireless network, and through an AdHoc network, so even if there is no WiFi where you happened to be, you can still use the app. Air Mouse Pro turns the screen of your device into a full function Multi-Touch trackpad. If you are hooking to a Mac then it assumes the same functionality as your portable would have, or limited multi touch with a desktop machine. After you install the menu bar application on the desktop, which is required to use this app, you can fully control your Mac.

Besides giving you remote control of the mouse cursor you have FULL keyboard functionality. Beyond the QWERTY style standard keyboard, you get much of the functionality of the Mac’s keyboard, including the Command, Option, and Control keys. If you flip it into “Function key” mode then you get a list of the “F” keys: F1, F2, F3, Etc, as well as arrow keys. It has a “web” mode that when you tap it opens your default web browser, and you get basic functionality like Home, Search, Forward, Backward, Stop, Refresh, Etc. You can also flip it into “Media” mode and it will bring up your default media browser (usually iTunes or Front Row on the Mac). From there you have access to Play/Pause, Next, Previous and volume.

Air Mouse Pro uses the accelerometer in your device to switch between portrait and landscape mode for both the trackpad and the keyboard. If you rotate it into landscape mode it most closely resembles the built in trackpad that Apple ships, and is the most natural for me to use. However if you have it in portrait mode you get a neat little scroll “wheel” you can use to scroll through web pages and the like. In both portrait and landscape you get two virtual mouse buttons, for left and right click, similar to on a notebook computer. However I was able to set up the multi touch, so for example the two-finger scrolling, two finger tap, double tap, and tap to click.

From anywhere within the app you can shake the device to hide/show the keyboard and controls. When the keyboard is there you still get about the top half of the screen to use as a track pad. Then when you shake it again to hide the keyboard the entire screen is a functional tracking surface. From within the desktop app that is required you get preferences such as: tracking speed, scrolling speed, as well as control over how the special keyboards function.

Air Mouse Pro normally runs $5.99 in the App Store, but is currently discounted for $2.99. It can be found at http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=289616509&mt=8.

Before you can use Air Mouse Pro to control you computer you need to download and instal the menu bar based app. That half of it is free and can be found at: http://mobileairmouse.com.

I hope you take the time to check out Air Mouse Pro, and most importantly I hope you get joy and functionality out of it, I know I do!