It's not hard to make a difference

December 15, 2011 - Filed in Shared thoughts by Felix

Past year's news often were about huge, billion dollar programmes to stabilize the economy, the banks, the markets, the Euro .. you name it! With such huge sums still taking a dominant place in this world's news on a regular basis, it's easy to forget that even very small amounts can make a huge impact when given to the right organization.

To me, one such organization is Doctors Without Borders, an international medical humanitarian organization that is committed to bringing medical care to people in crisis regardless of their race, religion or political affiliation. Not few people owe their life to the donations that made their work possible. Here's just one example from their website: $35 can purchase enough vaccine to inoculate 35 people against measles. A fairly common desease for which - in some countries - the mortality rates are still as high as 28% (source: Wikipedia).

If you are looking for something truly special to spend money on this christmas: make a donation to Doctors Without Borders. Make a difference.

Spacious 1.0: fast switching between OS X Lion spaces, fullscreen apps with every mouse

November 15, 2011 - Filed in Press Release by Felix

IOSPIRIT is proud to announce the immediate availability of its latest creation: Spacious 1.0.

What is Spacious?

Spacious allows switching between OS X Lion spaces and fullscreen apps with every mouse. Via the Spacious Navigator that's shown when the mouse cursor is moved to the display borders. Or directly with many mice wheel.

Watch the demo video at the Spacious website to see it in action.

Why Spacious?

Imagine you're using an ordinary mouse with OS X Lion and you want to switch between spaces. You'll need to move your hand over to the keyboard, locate and press the right key combination - and move back to your mouse. If you need to switch often, chances are you'll soon find this highly annoying and a constant source of interruption in your workflow.

Spacious offers smart solutions to this and other space-related challenges.

Key Features

• Switch to neighbouring spaces
  The Spacious Navigator appears when you move your mouse to your display’s borders and keep moving. Click on the Navigator to switch to the next or previous space.

• Quick app switching and quitting
  Right-click on the Spacious Navigator to access recently used applications and Mission Control. Hover over an app's icon and a close button appears, allowing you to quit that app.

• Mouse wheel switching
  If your mouse wheel can scroll left and right (often possible by tilting it), you can turn on an option in Spacious and henceforth use it to switch to the next and previous space instead.

See Spacious in Action

See Spacious and its most important features in action in the "Introducing Spacious" video at the Spacious Website (http://www.iospirit.com/spacious/).

Pricing, Availability and System Requirements

Spacious 1.0 is available at the Mac App Store at an introductory price of 5.99 US$ *. Spacious requires a Mac running Mac OS X Lion 10.7 or later.

About IOSPIRIT

IOSPIRIT was founded by Felix Schwarz in 2004 and is based in Roth (Bavaria, Germany). It focuses on the development of innovative software for Mac OS X and iOS.

IOSPIRIT is best known for Remote Buddy, the most powerful remote control solution for the Mac. An Express version of Remote Buddy is also available at the Mac App Store.

Introducing the AJAX Remote App for iPhone™ and iPod® Touch

October 21, 2011 - Filed in Press Release by Felix

IOSPIRIT is proud to announce the immediate availability of the AJAX Remote App on the App Store.

The AJAX Remote App makes it easy to search and log in to available AJAX Remotes on the same Wi-Fi network. AJAX Remote is a web app served by the Remote Buddy and Remote Buddy Express Mac® applications (need to purchased separately).

Key Features

• simplified AJAX Remote setup
• browse and log in to AJAX Remotes
• automatic launch of modules after log-in
• automatic login to last used AJAX Remote at startup
• saves your AJAX Remote password as part of your keychain

Requirements

• A Mac® running Remote Buddy or Remote Buddy Express version 1.19 or later, with AJAX Remote enabled
• Mac® and iPhone™/iPod® Touch need to be connected to the same, reliable Wi-Fi network allowing direct connections between its clients
• iOS 4.2 or later

Updates to Remote Buddy and Remote Buddy Express

Also available today are updates to Remote Buddy 1.19 and Remote Buddy Express 1.19, adding support for the new app.

Screenshots

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!