User

11.07.2007 03:10:48

Hi Felix,

Say this new addition is really, REALLY cool. Nice job on this.

So I have been playing around with this and wanted to let you know a couple of things:

1. Screen Control: I am lost on this one. What do all the controls mean or do? No matter what I have tried, touching the displayed image doesn't do anything to my mouse, I cannot get it to move at all. I can get the screen to come up, get the mousepose to turn on, but nothing else I try seems to work. If I try to move the mouse on the screen, it just moves the browser window on the iPhone up and down.

2. Music Browser: This is really cool, but man is it suuuuper slow. I have a large iTunes collection and when you try to surf around in it, takes forever to load the menus. It does work, but I have to stick to playlists, otherwise it takes a while to load up.

On the positive side, the remote works great, as does many of the other features. Overall, for being beta, it is a great beta. But there are my observations so far.

Great job Felix, truly some brilliance going on here. 

User

11.07.2007 15:31:02

Hi Erick,

thanks for the feedback!

1. The iPhone Safari does not support mouse dragging events. Thus - 
at least on the iPhone - only tapping will work while dragging will 
always move the screen. Tapping, though, will trigger a click event. 
Which, in turn, was not handled in the initial 1.1 version. I've just 
added handling for the click event and replaced the 1.1 download with 
the new version. Please download it and let me know whether it solves 
the problem.

I've already written a bug report to Apple to tell them just how much 
this limits the abilities to write webapps (and placed some info on 
the blog), yet it's still "Open" just like all bugs I submitted since 
2005, so not much hope there I guess.

2. If it's mainly the transition that is slow, this problem should be 
fixed with the new revision of 1.1 as well. The duration of 
transitions there is now limited to half a second - independant of 
the device used to display the menu. Please let me know, if it was 
just that or if it's really the length of the lists for your music 
library.

Please keep the feedback coming - especially on things that don't 
work or where the design might lack (i.e. I'm unsure whether the 
buttons on the top that give you quick access to mouse, keyboard and 
remote are big enough to be chosen reliably).

I probably won't have access to an iPhone prior to its release in 
Europe, so I'm totally dependant on the feedback of iPhone owners to 
improve the AJAX Remote experience and fix any bugs in it ;-)

That said, thanks a ton for your continued support over such a long 
time, Erick! It's really, really appreciated on my end!

Best regards, 
Felix

P.S.: I'll answer all other forum posts later today, right after 
finishing the press release for 1.1. Sorry for the overly long delay 
in answering! 

User

12.07.2007 17:11:04

Wow, wow, WOW! Great, now I *really* have to buy an iPhone. :) 

User

13.07.2007 04:12:17

The "Now Playing" mode is really a killer app for the iPhone--it's enough that I'll be a RB customer soon.

The interface is very iPhone-ish--looks great. For the "Now Playing" mode, I would suggest a volume control and current playing time (or graphical slider, like in iTunes and the iPod). These two additions would make the mode a full-featured iTunes remote.

Certain CSS calls, I understand, will make Safari hide the menubar. This would open up a bit more screen real estate. See here: http://www.joehewitt.com/blog/introducing_iui.php

Like the previous poster, I have a large library (~20,000 tracks), and it is very slow to browser in RB on the iPhone. While disappointing, this is certainly understandable, though. Most people, probably, do not have this problem.

Anyway, thanks for a neat and very useful application. 

User

13.07.2007 05:13:47

I've been using the trial version for a few days and I have to say that this is an amazing product. Using my iPhone to run iTunes on a Mac Mini that's in the basement... sending the audio through an Airport Express attached to outdoor speakers... while lounging by the pool.

I have one enhancement request. Please allow customers to easily customize the "Home" page. I have no use for the Movies or EyeTV options and would like to have the ability to hide them. I would also like to have the ability to rearrange the icons. For me, I would like to hide all but the Music, Now Playing, and Remote icons.

I have figured out how to manually edit the html code, but I don't like the idea of messing with your good work.

Thanks! 

User

13.07.2007 13:06:01

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I had not discovered that there's a wealth of information on iPhone 
web dev until after the release of Remote Buddy 1.1. Future versions 
will take advantage of the ability to hide the menu bar and the 
additional screen real estate (especially useful for the "Now 
Playing" module).

Which parts of the library browsing are particularly slow on your 
iPhone? The scrolling itself - or just the left-right transition? How 
long would you estimate a long list that is causing speed problems to be

Background is, I already limited the left-right scrolling to not take 
longer than half a second in a silent update to the Remote Buddy 
download. And adding some additional A-Z pre-filtering in places 
where you experience overly long lists shouldn't be a problem.

Best regards, 
Felix 

User

13.07.2007 13:09:02

It's great to hear you are using the iTunes capabilities exactly as I 
had them in mind (which more or less was "Mac mini as a screenless 
iTunes jukebox").

The home page currently is just a static HTML file with Javascript 
hooks. I do plan to create it dynamically with future versions, 
though, as there are more modules to come as well and I plan to open 
up the API for developing / adding ones of your own as well.

Best regards, 
Felix 

User

18.07.2007 07:41:26

A suggestion if I may. Some other iPhone web apps allow you to "hide" the address bar at the top. This isn't acceptable by the developer guidelines documentation in the Apple Developer Connection, but it can gain you an additional 60px. I'm not sure how the apps (like digg.com/iphone) are doing it, but my guess is that it is a CSS trick. This would help with adding extra height to smallish buttons (like the bottom row of controls in "Now Playing." 

User

18.07.2007 11:50:45

Tried the demo and purchased a license pretty much immediately.

One thing I've noticed is that using the (slow) EDGE network, it typically takes from 45 seconds to 2 minutes to load up the Now Playing page.

Usually, the 'user interface' pops up first, but the actual track information takes much longer to load up. This happens even if there is no available album art, so I'm not sure why data transfer should be so slow.

Is there any way to either speed up the data transfer for the current "Now Playing" page, or else have a 'slimmed down' text only version (perhaps added to the "Music" button)? For example, if I use the text-only "Music" button interface (instead of "Now playing"), navigation is fairly quick even over the EDGE network, so long as I don't try to look at lists of hundreds of songs.

Speaking of which, since the iPhone doesn't have a 'Search' functionality within a web page, there's little reason to even list hundreds of tracks -- it takes forever to 'flick' scroll through them all.

I think with iPhone / Remote Buddy, practically, you are limited to using only short playlists.

User

19.07.2007 20:06:01

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll make use of that method in future 
versions.

Besides, I'm currently looking for beta testers with iPhones that are 
willing to test new and improved modules as they come along and 
report back what works or does not work.

Best regards, 
Felix 

User

19.07.2007 20:44:01

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm a bit surprised about the loading time over EDGE, as the Now 
Playing page does not use that much resources. Around ~ 20 KBytes of 
data including the "this title has no cover" cover. And then 2-20 
KByte per new song/cover.

What's perfectly possible, though, is that "Now playing" polls the 
track information too fast for Edge, so that most queries are 
interupted by new queries and thus that most of them do not finish, 
so no info is displayed until one is "quick enough". I'll implement a 
change in the next version to avoid this problem altogether.

What seems to be the limit for the length of song lists? Do one 
hundred still work fine performancewise?

I'm looking at workarounds for the limited speed of the iPhone with 
"long" webpages, but I'll need this important piece of info to create 
a useful implementation for this workaround.

Best regards, 
Felix 

User

19.07.2007 21:49:29

 
 
Over the EDGE network, I think I loaded a playlist with a hundred or two hundred songs, and it didn't take too long to LOAD. However, because the iPhone doesn't currently allow SEARCHING within a web page, it takes a ridiculous amount of manual scrolling to get to the bottom of the list.

I haven't tried it yet, but this might allow searching: http://www.lifeclever.com/17-powerful-bookmarklets-for-your-iphone/

On the other hand, I now realize that using EDGE to allow REMOTE (non-local network) access to Remote Buddy on a desktop computer might be a Really Bad Idea.

Am I correct that the password for Remote Buddy is sent in cleartext? If so, given that Remote Buddy seems to have access to file / directories / low-level stuff, I assume that it is foolish to allow access from outside the local network?

Any chance Remote Buddy could use https / SSL for passwords? 

User

19.07.2007 22:21:48

 
 
I'm an iPhone user that recently started using Remote Buddy again now that the graphics stutter is gone. I'd be glad to beta test modules for you. 

User

19.07.2007 23:13:34

wow. Excellent product-- I did not open my iPhone until i saw your product on line. (I was hesitating because of my hatred of ATT, and all the usual stuff). Your software put me over the edge.

iTunes now playing- WOW, but my fingers are a little too fat for the play/pause, etc. buttons on the bottom. I keep hitting the "previous" and "next" Safari buttons instead. The Rating section is nice, but not nearly as important as play/pause.

I also use my iPhone to control an Apple Cube that runs DVDpedia to launch Video_ts files -- then DVD Player and connects to my TV/sound system. OUTSTANDING. I'm still learning exactly how to navigate the buttons. But wow. just wow. thanks. 

User

20.07.2007 12:03:01

Thanks for the insightful post!

So, the actual task of scrolling the list isn't actually the 
performance problem here then? It's more the length of the list that 
makes it take a long time to reach its end?

How does the iPhone handle a list with thousands of entries (i.e. if 
you access the "Tracks" category in the "Music" part)? Does it still 
scroll smoothly? Are the entries displayed instantly (or do they need 
their time to display like in the demo videos by Apple)?

The password is sent in clear text, but only once upon login. From 
then on, a unique session ID is used to identify your iPhone as an 
authorized client. And in fact, the AJAX Remote was designed with 
your local network in mind, which - by itself - should already be 
encrypted and thus secure the connection.

However, taking a closer look at the security issues that spring to 
mind are giving a somewhat different image than you might expect:

1) You can browse the filesystem using Remote Buddy and open them in 
applications installed on your Mac, but not download them via your 
browser. However, before you can do that, as an attacker, you do need 
to have either the correct password or a currently valid session ID 
(which is strong enough to withstand brute force attacks for a very 
long time).

2) If you want to find out about either of the password or session ID 
easily, the attacker would need to listen to your network connection. 
If he can do this, however, he'll already have been able to gain 
access to other passwords in the past, as many websites that offer 
login options do not offer encrypted connections for them 
(iospirit.com, btw, does encrypt your entire login and then your 
entire session via SSL, no matter which area of the website you access).

3) If someone already has the ability to sniff your network 
connection, SSL is of very limited use. "But SSL encrypts my 
connection, right?" I hear you ask. Yes, it does. But as so often, 
it's the details:

If you want to encrypt your network connection via SSL, you'll need a 
private key and a certificate belonging to it. Both can be generated 
easily with tools shipping with each OS X install. So far so good.

Usually, when a company uses a certificate on their webserver to 
secure its connection, they let it sign by a trust center (this has 
been done for i.e. https://secure.iospirit.com/ - and it costs you 
quite some dollars to do - more than at least two copies of Remote 
Buddy for sure - annually, per domain). Your browser already has a 
trusted copy of the trust center's certificate and this way can 
verify that the certificate it receives is not spoofed / faked. 
However, with self-signed certificates, and that's what we're 
speaking about here, your browser can't verify whether it's really 
your certificate that is being used to secure the connection. So, 
with self-signed certificates, a man-in-the-middle attack (MITMA) is 
perfectly possible. MITMAs work this way:

Your server, your certificate <-> Man in the middle client

and then

Man in the middle, uses his own certificate <-> your client

So basically, the MITM establishes a secure connection in your place, 
gets access to the data in clear text, then plays the role of the 
server and establishes a "secure" connection with your client (which 
believes the MITM *is* your server). As your certificate is not 
signed, you'll receive a warning, but unless you really go to some 
length to check the validity of the certificate *each and every time* 
upon that warning, you can't be sure that nobody is listening to your 
connection and abusing the service.

There's more info on Wikipedia on this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_in_the_middle

The usage of dynamic IPs for internet connections does add to the 
problem as a certificate does contain the website's domain name (also 
called "common name") - and this one keeps changing on each reconnect 
of your Mac. So, unless you have a static IP, even if you would go 
through a trust center, you’d have to shell out (a lot of) money and 
time each time the IP of your Mac changes. Otherwise, when common 
name and "domain name" (here: your IP) do not match, the browser will 
warn you as well (try connecting to https://www.iospirit.com/ to 
receive such a warning - as the certificate is bound to a different 
subdomain, https://secure.iospirit.com/ ).

So, yes, free, self-signed SSL certificates certainly help against 
"dumb" attackers. But if someone really is able to listen to your 
network connection, he'll usually also have the tools and knowledge 
to know how he can listen to your connection nonetheless using a MITMA.

I'll look at adding SSL support nonetheless, although I feel that the 
gain in security will mostly be a felt one rather than a real one.

Best regards, 
Felix 

User

20.07.2007 20:08:57

 
 
With around 100 tracks, it takes less than 1 second to load the list, and scrolling is smooth as always. Same goes for around 250 tracks, which does take a few seconds to load. 400 tracks took around 10-20 seconds to load, and scrolls smoothly.

However, I just tried loading my entire iTunes track list (4000+ tracks) with the iPhone remote, and it made mobileSafari become unresponsive, where I could tap the safari control buttons, but it would take forever to respond; even pressing the home button to get out of mobileSafari took about 10-20 seconds to respond. 

User

22.07.2007 00:23:55

Very cool! My only concern is the price, as I would only really use the iTunes controller features...but enough about that:

Why isn't Now Playing built into the Music section? It seems logical that you would select a song and then it would go to Now Playing (like on an iPod). I understand that it might be a bandwidth issue, but won't most people utilizing this functionality be on WiFi anyway?

also,

Can i request the ability to list artist by name? Instead of just the first letter of the alphabet with the number of artists included within that letter listed next to it.

Thanks, and keep it up! 

User

23.07.2007 22:33:01

Thanks, I noted you down and will get in touch with you as soon as 
I've finished work on new modules.

Best regards, 
Felix 

User

23.07.2007 22:35:01

Thanks for sharing!

The Now Playing will be subject to a number of improvements and I'm 
confident bigger buttons will be a part of it. Please don't hesitate 
to let me know if other items are equally "mis-sized" as I've not 
access to an iPhone. For the time being and the usability tests I can 
"run" myself are more of a thought experiment ;-)

Best regards, 
Felix 

User

23.07.2007 22:42:01

Thanks a ton for that performance info. I'll design future menu 
implementations around these (and keep hoping that Apple will deliver 
a *real* SDK at some point ;-)

Best regards, 
Felix 

User

23.07.2007 23:04:02

Mike,

with an iPhone starting at $499, the cheapest plans starting at $60 / 
month, the activation fee of $36 and even a dead simple USB cable for 
charging the iPhone costing $19, I can hardly see Remote Buddy's 
price as being a concern, sorry - even if you only use the iTunes 
controller features. It's peanuts in comparison to what an iPhone 
costs you every month and you get a continued (or, better: even 
growing) value that's not limited to the iPhone in return. ;-)

Regarding your questions:

 
The technical reason is that the menu engine (used for all menus) is 
not specific to the music browser.

Then, I'm also going by my usage pattern, which is that I want to 
switch between tracks real quick and with minimum effort. When I 
listen to Music, I often skip tracks that I don't like as soon as I 
recognize them - or just want to quickly listen to the first xy 
seconds of the tracks to get a quick, first idea of what the entire 
album sounds like.

Both of these would require additional taps if it would switch over 
to the Now Playing display automatically. Also, if it was only 
available when you select a track, you couldn't just "tune in" at any 
time, to any tune you want to listen to.

The way it is now, you can quickly browse through and switch tracks - 
and reach "Now Playing" with two taps from anywhere when you just 
want to use your iPhone as a display for the music that you currently 
listen to.

That said, the design is flexible enough to provide shortcuts between 
the two, but I keep believing that the current solution actually 
gives you quicker access to the functions (I'm always open to counter 
arguments, though ;-)

 
I don't know, whether I get you right, but if you want to view a list 
of artists/albums/.. instead of an A-Z shortcut view, a tap on "All" 
will bring up such a view.

Best regards, 
Felix 

User

05.08.2007 06:47:01

Count me in as a tester - just discovered and installed tonight - Fantastic as an itunes remote for the iPhone! 
MB Pro Intel, iPhone, Airport Extreme N...

Planning on a windows port? my usual itunes server is a windows machine, but this makes it worth leaving the MB connected to the stereo.

JC

...> Besides, I'm currently looking for beta testers with iPhones that are

User

08.08.2007 19:01:06

I've been using Remote Buddy for just a day now but i love it. Great concept and really well put together. 
Functionality wise it works great, tho there is one thing visually that i thought could look and function better. When browsing the music section, the look is uncharacteristicly plain looking when compared to other areas of the app. Also, moving back and forth through the menus in the music section can be tricky since the back button is in the same spot as the options to go forward in the menu. A button at the top to go back one level of the menu would be great, and would also be consistent with other iphone apps, making it a little more user friendly. Thats just my opinion. Also I am an iPhone user and would be interested in being a beta tester. 
Again, overall, great job on the app and i cant wait to see how this one evolves! 
-Mr. Mike 

User

11.08.2007 17:02:01

Thanks everybody for the feedback.

To Mike: 
The "back arrow in every line" is required by Remote Buddy's design. 
Only this way is it possible to implement embedded controls like 
Remote Buddy uses them to adjust volume, brightness, cycle through 
options, etc.

Best regards, 
Felix