There are plenty of iOS apps out now to control your Mac. Most of the ones I've used do a pretty good job of giving you access to your system on both the iPhone and the ipad. but the app I'm going to walkabout today – Remote HD – is very unique, and has some features I haven't seen in other apps. It's almost like one of those late-night informercials – "but wait! There's more!"

First off, unlike many of the other remote control apps, Remote HD requires you to download a (free) helper application for your Mac (or PC).It's pretty unobtrusive – I have it set only to show in the Status Bar, but you can have it show there, in the Dock, or nowhere at all. It takes up 42 MB of memory – not a lot, but if you're already on the edge, you might care. The upside is that the helper app allows Remote HD to do more than many other remote control programs.

The helper app can automatically configure your firewall for you to open a connection to the outside if you like (it doesn't by default). If you don't have "Back To My Mac" available (because you don't want to use it or you're not a MobileMe member) and you aren't handy with firewalls and/or setting up your own VPN, this can be a big help.

The app is universal, and has been optimized for both iPhone and iPad. The iPhone version can use upgraded Retina Display quality graphics (but you can turn this off if you like to get the speed up). The iPad screens are optimized to take advantage of the much larger real estate available. 

Here's what it looks like on the iPad:


Tapping on the monitor icon in the upper-right of the iPhone version brings you to a full-screen view, as does hitting the double-arrows in the upper-right of the iPad version. Once you're there, you can bring up arrow keys to move about menus or just touch with your finger to use it as a mouse. It does all those things you'd expect from a remote control app, so I'm not going to detail them all here. I want to focus on the unique things Remote HD does.

 

You can get Remote HD for $5.99 here from the iTunes

 

First off, if you look to the lower-right of the iPhone screen you'll see an icon of a box with a line in it. To the lower-left of the iPad screen, you'll see something that looks like the Apple trackpad. Both of these items turn your iOS device into a trackpad – with the addition that you can pull down a keyboard when needed as well.

Notice at the top it says "Mail?" You can tap that, and you'll get the list of running apps that you can scroll throughout the bottom of your screen – you can even send an app away by hitting the red circle, or switch to another app by tapping it. The list scrolls right and left. This is available in all modes, not just on the trackpad mode.

Another great feature of Remote HD is the ability to launch anything in your Dock without scrolling around the screen and zooming in. Just go to the List icon ion the upper-right and in the drop-down list select Dock:

You can scroll up and own until you find what you want to launch. But what if the program you want isn't in the Dock? Select "Applications" instead of "Dock" to get a full list of all your installed apps:

Not only can you scroll, but you have jump access via the alphabet to the right. This is a lot quicker than zooming and scrolling around on the screen. And all this for only $5.99. But wait! There's more!
 

What about Apple TV?

Do you have an AppleTV – the original one, not the new one. Did you notice the first screen shot – that's my iPhone connected to one of my AppleTVs. Now, to control an AppleTV, you need to have modified it with FireCore's aTVFlash  ($39.95). (You may also be able to get the open-source version of the patches to work, but I never was successful and decided just to buy a working solution.) Since Apple is no longer upgrading the original AppleTV, I figured there was no harm in installing the patch (you can always restore to factory fresh and re-download all the Apple updates). aTV Flash adds to the capabilities of the AppleTV, it doesn't take any away, and it does it by adding items to the menu, so it integrates seamlessly.

This is a screen shot of my AppleTV running the Apple-supplied YouTube app (the shot was taken with my iPhone):

The AppleTV is treated like any other computer, so you can use the touch screen to tap on items to select them, or use Remote HD's controls. What's also nice is that the full keyboard is available to use, so when logging into YouTube it's not a 5 minute hunt and peck by scrolling all over the on-screen keyboard (although you still can if you want to!).

I did run into a problem trying to control Boxee with Remote HD – every keystroke seems to get multiplied by about 50, so I couldn't log in. I wound up switching to the free Boxee app to control it. But everything else worked great.
 

So is it worth $5.99 to you yet?

But wait! There's more! Maybe you're just a little envious of the AppleTV 2 owners who can stream from their iOS device to their AppleTV. Thanks to Remote HD, you can do this to your older AppleTV as well! Start up and connect Remote HD to your AppleTV (again, you need to have patched it as above), then any iOS app that supports streaming video will see the AppleTV and stream to it. It streams video and audio, and did a great job – I didn't see any lag or stuttering from either my iPhone4 or iPad. (My AppleTV is wired, not wireless, which I would suggest anyway if possible – I had problems with the stock AppleTV software trying to stream wirelessly.)

Oddly enough, audio-only streaming does *not* work yet. It is supposed to be working soon though. I was able to stream from YouTube, the iPad video app, the iPhone iPod app (videos only, but with their audio) and a slideshow from my iPod (but the music only played on the iPad). Still, for $5.99 – and even if you have to pop for the aTV Flash at $39.99 – it's still cheaper than buying a new AppleTV, especially if there's nothing wrong with the one you have (other than Apple is no longer upgrading it).

Now, nothing's perfect, so I will point out that you are supposed to be able to stream audio from a Mac or PC (not an AppleTV) while it's being controlled – many of the other remote control apps do this as well. For some reason, I couldn't get it to work. So with this and the audio-only AirPlay not yet working, I'm going to rate Remote HD at a 4 out of 5.