iPad App: Rowmote Pro

April 8th, 2010

= 5 stars

Control your Mac using this app that turns your iPad into a ginormous remote control.

The Good

• One drawback of any iPhone remote app is the small screen. Well, that’s no longer an issue with the iPad. Rowmote Pro’s track pad area is generously huge, as is the slide-out keyboard. There’s even room to put left and right mouse click buttons just below the track pad.
• The trackpad includes useful touch gestures: tap to left click, tap with two fingers to right click, swipe with two fingers to scroll. To click and drag, hold down the left mouse button while dragging, or turn on a setting to allow a double-tap followed by a drag. Cool trick: pinch to zoom. Yeah, it’s entirely awesome to zoom in while video is playing on your television.
• A tool bar at screen bottom features buttons to call up the keyboard, and command, option, control, tab, and escape keys.
• Tapping the Applications button shows an app launcher for quick launching of all your apps, plus commonly-used keyboard commands like quit, close window, and toggle full screen. You can uncheck apps from the list to keep them from appearing, and change the order. Along the bottom of this app launcher is a horizontally-scrollable “mini dock.” You can also access the app launcher “mini dock” by tapping the application name in the lower right corner, just above the keyboard icon.

The Bad

• Must install Rowmote Helper software on the Mac you want to control.
• The large screen makes the remote control option a little less useful, since the buttons are as large as those senior-citizen calculators. A simple, push-button remote seems best wielded with one hand, which the iPad is too heavy for.
• The color scheme is no longer white and grey, but an inky black, possibly done so you can use the remote in a darkened room. Personally, I’d like the option to switch the interface back to the white of the iPhone version.
• The “mini dock” in the app launcher is rather small, and begs to take up the full width of the iPad screen.

Conclusion

Despite my aesthetically-related complaints, functionality wise, Rowmote Pro on the iPad shines, and yet again, remains my chosen app to control the Mac Mini hooked up to the television with an iDevice. Personally, it almost makes the iPad completely worth it.

iTunes App Store Link: Rowmote Pro: Remote Control for Mac and Classic Apple TV — Evan Schoenberg