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.

Summer Sale

August 3, 2011 - Filed in Status updates, Press Release by Felix

Due to the highly positive reception, we're extending the roaring 5 year 20% promo throughout August.

It'll now end on September 1st, 2011. If you or your friends haven't gotten a Remote Buddy yet, don't miss this crazy deal.

[Update 2011/09/02: The sale has ended.]

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!

Remote Buddy 1.18: a roartastic update

July 20, 2011 - Filed in Status updates by Felix

The new big cat is now in the wild - and so is Remote Buddy 1.18, giving you access to some of Lion's greatest new features via your remote on the day of Lion's release. So, what's new? What has changed?

Support for Photo Booth's fullscreen mode

PhotoBooth has always been fun to play with. Lion adds new effects and a gorgeous fullscreen mode. With Remote Buddy, you can now switch in and out of this new mode - and even select the effect of your choice via your remote. For the latter, Remote Buddy implements its own selection interface that it displays on top of PhotoBooth (pictured below).

Use Remote Buddy instead of Front Row

Starting with Lion, Front Row is no longer part of OS X. With its enormous, deeply integrated feature set, Remote Buddy can easily be used as a replacement, though: browsing local and remote iTunes® music libraries, controlling DVD Player (including launching VIDEO_TS folders) and QuickTime® Player X (incl. filesystem navigation), browsing albums or starting slideshows in iPhoto™, switching between all these apps - Remote Buddy already does it all for years.

Accessibility, Spaces and Exposé

Lion has replaced Spaces and Exposé with Mission Control. So these Behaviours are no longer available under Lion. If you want to switch to the existing fullscreen space of a particular application, all you need to do is to activate the respective Behaviour.

The Accessibility Behaviour is no longer available under Lion.

iTunes® 10.4 and fullscreen CoverFlow mode

iTunes® 10.4 was released the same day as Lion - and Remote Buddy 1.18 already supports its major new feature: the fullscreen mode. As it turns out, however, Apple® at the same time removed the previously available keyboard shortcut for switching to a dedicated fullscreen CoverFlow mode, so that it can no longer be made available through Remote Buddy when using iTunes® 10.4.

iCal, Safari, Preview - new fullscreen modes everywhere

Lion brings a lot of nice detail improvements to its bundled applications. iCal features a new year view. And like Safari and Preview, it now also supports a fullscreen mode. With this update, Remote Buddy gives you access to these.

Safari and the Virtual Mouse

The default mapping of the Safari Behaviour (on all OS releases) was updated to switch to the Virtual Mouse when holding the Menu button. To switch back to the Safari Behaviour, hold the Menu button again.

Lion's 64-Bit kernel and an update to Candelair

Remote Buddy 1.18 comes bundled with Lion-ready Candelair 1.6. Since Lion now boots a 64 Bit kernel by default, a few changes were necessary.

When transitioning OS X® to a 64 Bit kernel, Apple® also removed functionality from its IOKit driver stack. In consequence, Candelair can no longer implement a compatibility hook needed by some software. Such software uses outdated, error-prone code to implement support for the Apple® Remote on its own. Software using said code will not be able to access the Apple® Remote when Candelair is installed - and in turn can also not be controlled with Remote Buddy's Virtual Remote any more. Since almost all popular and actively developed software - including EyeTV, Plex, XBMC, Boxee, iAlertU and of course Remote Buddy - is now using our modern, user-friendly HIDRemote class, this hardly presents a problem in real world, everyday use, though. If you, however, depend on software with a 64 bit incompatibility, you can boot your Mac® with a 32 bit kernel by pressing and holding the keys 3 and 2 during boot.