Update frenzy at IOSPIRIT

January 18, 2012 - Filed in Status updates, Mac Development by Felix

Today, you can download brand new versions of almost all IOSPIRIT products: Remote Buddy 1.20, Remote Buddy Express 1.20, Candelair 1.9 and Remote Control Diagnostics 1.2.

Remote Buddy 1.20: control Rdio, Soundcloud, Chrome, QVIVO Player with your remote

The latest release adds support for controlling the aforementioned applications. It also includes Candelair 1.9 (read on for details) and a long list of other minor and major improvements and bugfixes in almost all areas. The Express version also receives an update.

Candelair 1.9: iMac® 2011 compatibility, new Apple® IR emulation, end-of-life for the legacy compatibility mode

A few users of iMac® 2011 models reported issues when putting their Mac® through a sleep/wake cycle under OS X® Lion: the Apple® Remote sometimes no longer was available after that. This issue was particularly hard to address because I couldn't reproduce it. Thanks to the help of affected users, though, I could identify and address the issue. Candelair 1.9 addressed the issue on the systems of all users involved.

The Apple® IR emulation (also known as "Virtual Remote" in Remote Buddy) also received a major update and now exactly mimics the original Apple® IR Receiver on systems running a 64 Bit kernel as well. This re-establishes full compatibility with applications whose Apple® Remote code still depends on undocumented driver internals.

Of course, depending on undocumented driver internals is never a good idea. Which maybe was best illustrated with the release of OS X® 10.4.9, again with 10.5 - and again with 10.6.2. All of these releases changed driver internals. All applications depending on them broke. Each time with consequences ranging from Apple® Remote support not working in just the applications in question to rendering the Apple® Remote unusable systemwide. Previous versions of Candelair provided a Legacy Compatibility mode that allowed applications depending on OS X® 10.5 driver internals to continue to work under OS X® 10.6.2 and beyond. It was meant to give application developers additional time to switch to driver and OS version independent code like the HIDRemote class. A change that should require a developer less than half an hour of work - including testing. Many developers used this opportunity. Others didn't - and probably never will.

To further simplify and streamline Candelair, version 1.9 therefore removes the Legacy Compatibility mode. If this is a problem for one of the apps you're using, please get in touch with their respective developer. Adopting the HIDRemote class is easy.

Remote Control Diagnostics 1.2

Recognition and correct handling of the new Apple IR driver as well as minor visual tweaks best describe the changes in this new version of Remote Control Diagnostics.

On the new AJAX Remote App

October 21, 2011 - Filed in Mac Development by Felix

In July 2008, Apple® released their "Remote" app for iTunes®. It was the first app in the App Store and covered most of the functionality that AJAX Remote's very popular music module had offered. The day after Remote's debut and after receiving lots of emails asking about AJAX Remote's future, I determined that the best way to address the situation was by blogging about the current state of development and what my plans for it were.

Unfortunately, sometimes things don't work out as originally planned. Unpredictable events occur. Outer circumstances change. Or you run into roadblocks that you didn't see coming - without prior warning, at full throttle.

After having spent several years of my life working on this project, I'm incredibly sorry to announce that the fully native AJAX Remote client has met this fate.

As it turned out late in the client's development, Remote Buddy's current internal menu system structure isn't fit for being wrapped into a native iOS user interface. I've spent a lot of time and effort trying to work around that issue, but in the end had to come to the realization that there is no satisfactory way to work around it.

Since I did never stop working on improving AJAX Remote, today's version is already way better than its 2008 counterpart. Just to name a few: responsiveness has greatly improved across the board, there's a new gesture based remote - and the interface has seen several refreshes.

Compared to a native app, there are, however, a few things that the AJAX Remote web app can't achieve for technical reasons: simplified setup that leverages Bonjour, waking a sleeping Mac via WOL (wake on LAN) - and storing the password in the keychain.

The AJAX Remote App that's now available fills these gaps. And, for good measure, it also let's you choose a module (like f.ex. the Remote or Music module) that's opened for you automatically, right after login. This, by far, has been the most frequently requested feature addition to AJAX Remote. I would also like to mention that the AJAX Remote App is capable of not just waking your Mac via WOL (which, under Lion, leaves the display turned off), but also wakes up your display when logging in to Remote Buddy's AJAX Remote.

Although the AJAX Remote App is not the fully native AJAX Remote client I had originally planned and that many of you may have hoped for, it's a vast improvement over the previous status quo.

Enjoy!

Waking the sleeping Lion: Remote Buddy 1.18.1

July 28, 2011 - Filed in Status updates, Mac Development by Felix

The sleep and wake behavior of Lion in many respects differs substantially from that of Snow Leopard. Most notably, a sleeping display can no longer be woken up by moving the mouse, an emulated key stroke (via f.ex. VNC) or the Apple® Remote. You now need to press a key on your keyboard or a button on your mouse or trackpad.

These changes make a lot of sense in environments where no remote controls are used: in these, it's now a lot harder to power the display back up by accident. You also usually won't need or want to power up a distant display that you most likely can't see when you access your Mac® via screen sharing software.

For users of remote controls, however, these changes can really be a show stopper. Especially for HTPC users, who may want to save power, but don't want to connect a mouse or keyboard to their Mac® just to wake up their displays.

Naturally, we got a lot of emails on this topic (btw: thanks to everybody for their great feedback!). But with the traditional ways of waking up a sleeping display (generating "system activity", posting mouse and keyboard events, ..) no longer working under Lion, we couldn't offer a solution right away.

So we studied Lion's source code to get the complete picture. What we learned pretty fast is that the change in behavior (as described in the first paragraph) is not a bug. In fact, several comments in Lion's source code strongly suggest this is a feature. This also makes sense to some extent (as described in the second paragraph).

By now, we've found three ways to wake sleeping displays from an application: one using private API and requiring root privileges, one using public API and requiring a kernel extension - and, after reading through a lot of kernel source code - one using only public API and requiring neither root privileges nor a kernel extension.

Naturally, we picked the third one for inclusion in Remote Buddy. The new version 1.18.1 now wakes sleeping displays whenever you press a button on your remote. It also addresses other Lion-specific issues that you've reported to us.

Enjoy!

P.S.: The 5 year celebration promo is still running, but will end in only 3 days. Don't miss this opportunity to save 20% - and don't forget to tell your Mac®-owning friends! Thanks!

Fresh from the labs: Remote Control Diagnostics helps diagnose Apple® Remote problems

February 2, 2010 - Filed in Mac Development by Felix

Over the past few months, IOSPIRIT has released two major components to further remote control support and interoperability in OS X applications: first, the Candelair driver package to cleanly work around widespread issues third-party applications are having with the Apple® Remote support in OS X 10.6. Second, the HIDRemote class, which makes it easy for developers to integrate robust, driver-independant and clean remote control support into their applications.

Both have helped a large number of users and an increasing number of high profile projects to make the use of the Apple® Remote a much more pleasant experience.

Today, Candelair and HIDRemote are joined by Remote Control Diagnostics (RCD). It helps you identify the source of issues where, when you press a button on your Apple® Remote, nothing happens. In the past, finding the true reason for such an issue could be pretty demanding with regards to time and required know-how. In contrast, RCD provides a one click system check that scans for almost all known error sources. If it finds an issue or potential issue, it provides you with information on how you can resolve it. RCD takes full advantage of additional diagnostic information provided by OS X 10.6 and the broadcasted metadata of HIDRemote-enabled applications.