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Ok, so we all know that Palm and Apple have been fighting a war over itunes and getting iTunes to work with the Pre. Let me start by saying this app has absolutely nothing to do with that (get DoubleTwist to take care of that problem). This app, called Remote from Hobbyist Software, basically turns your Pre or Pixi into a remote control for your iTunes setup.
The app costs $4.95 on the App Catalog and is called Remote, but it really only remotely controls iTunes (my guess they couldn’t call it iTunes Remote because Apple is…well…Apple).
So imagine you throwing your kids a birthday party and you have your iTunes rockin’ in the background. Suddenly you realize that “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas is playing and the parents are on the verge of freaking out. Normally you would knock over the table and lamp as you make a mad dash for your computer. If you are a cool parent with Remote, then all you need to do is whip out your Pre and change the song. Much smoother…although the fact that “My Humps” is on the birthday party playlist probably negates any smoothness you just earned.
Remote is a very cool app, but if the above scenario or a similar one doesn’t apply, then you probably don’t need it (unless you just want to show off for some reason).
So how does it work? Basically you download their little free app for your Mac or PC and Remote for your Palm device. Pair the two up with the little 4 digit code and poof, you are in the drivers seat. It works well, but I ran into a couple of gotchas. First, you have to have iTunes open. This may sound obvious, but I think it would be really cool if you could actually launch iTunes from the phone. From reading some of Hobbyists blog posts I get the feeling this should be possible, but I wasn’t able to get it working. Second, if you need to resync for some reason, you have to reinput your code. This is annoying, but not a show stopper.
Once you are up and running, you basically have a little iTunes on your phone. You can access your playlists, control the music (play, pause, skip, and even the volume). You even get the album art of the song that is playing. Nice touch. If you are looking for a specific song, then you can open the nice search interface and start hunting. Overall I was impressed with the responsiveness of the app and the interface is clean and easy to use.
- Easy to use
- Nice interface
- Does what it does very well.
- Had a few hiccups when setting it up. Not a big deal, but worth noting.
- Seems a bit pricey when considering that it only hooks up to iTunes (I will be reviewing Engine = Car’s Media Remote soon…it costs about the same but it hooks up to several different media players)
So would I purchase this app? Again, here are some questions to ask yourself.
- Do you use iTunes regularly as background music?
- Do you use iTunes almost exclusively for your media?
If you answered yes to both of these questions, then I definitely would recommend this app. If the answer to the first one is no, then I would say you can probably skip it. If the answer to number two is no, then you may want to consider Engine = Car’s Media Remote and see which one you like better.
As for myself, as I mentioned in my video review, I am a Zune guy (the few, the proud), and if this thing worked as well for the Zune as it does for iTunes, then I would be all over it, no questions asked. So get on that would ya Hobbyist? All seven Zune and Pre owners would really love it!!
Hi David,
Thanks for the review. Glad you liked it. Couple of points to add to the review
1) Opening iTunes. At the moment, the remote won’t open iTunes – we assume it is already open. But that’s a really nice idea, so I’ll definitely add it!
3) re keeping your pairing; The remote doesn’t keep the actual pairing code (that is just for temporary use) – but it does remember the connection to the iTunes helper. This means that if you launch the app again tomorrow it will make the connection automatically. e.g. you only have to pair once as long as your computer stays at the same ip address.
thanks again,
Rob
Great review and application. I am currently using the free version of this application and i think it works well. However, I am trying to decide between buying the full version of this or Media Remote by Engine Equals Car. It would be great if you could do a review of that application also.
PS. Which I knew about this site earlier. Must site dont include videos with their app reviews and it makes a big difference. Do you have a twitter account?
I have Media Remote on my list, so it will be up soon.
I do have a twitter account @webosroundup. You can follow me or join my RSS feed to get the latest reviews piping hot!!
David
I looked for something completely varied on Google and found this blog post, thanks, I actually really gained something from this.
Hey there, nice site, I just bookmarked it but how do I get your RSS feeds to function with my browser(Chrome)? I can