Rowmote: Remote Control for Mac and Apple TV 1G/2G

OK, let me see if I can explain how this is gonna work, as it's a pain in the kneck, but once you get it working, it actually does work quite well. First of all, if you are totally blind, and by that I mean the true diffinition of totally blind, as in, not visually impaired, I mean you literally have no vision at all, then, this app is gonna be useless. I don't mean any offense by that, I just don't see how, as Voiceover does not work very well with this app at all. You have to shut it off to get the remote buttons to even work at all.

First of all, you need to go, in Safari, on your Mac, to www.rowmote.com and vo+right arrow until you get down to the link to download the Rowmate Helper for Mac. Hit vo+Space on this link. Just, FYI, the download is just barely over a meg in size. Once done, go in your Finder and locate the zip file, and hit command+O on it to open it. This will unzip the file to its own folder. In here, you're going to have one file which is an mpkg file. Just run it like normal, and get it installed. Be ware you're going to get a message telling you it needs to modify things to work with your assistive devices. I don't exactly know what that means, as I see nothing it changed, but, go ahead and put in your administrative password, and let it do it, just to be safe. If you can't find the password pox in this dialog, it's inside the scroll area, so interact with that, then you should see it. Once all is done, Go into the app on your IOS device. You'll first be taken to the settings screen. As you flick right, you'll see a heading that says something to the effect of choose your Mac. Double tap this. I know, kind a weird, being it's a heading, but trust me. This now will tell you to select your mac from the list in the settings screen. I wasn't lucky. For some reason, it didn't show up. Even after the helper was running on my mac. One word of warning. If you have a router, you may have to enable port forwarding of port 5842 for both TCP, and UDP, and forward it to your mac's private IP address. That's beyond the scope of these comments though. If you don't see your mac, then you're gonna have to get it's IP address. Go to System prefs, on the mac, then to network. Now, interact with the services table, and find airport. Once selected stop interacting with the table, and vo+right. Eventually you'll come to where it says the network it's connected to and gives the IP address. Now, go back to your I O S device. In the settings screen, double tap to choose custom IP. You will get a num pad, and be presented with 4 boxes for each of the four parts of the IP. As you type the digits, the cursor will move by itself to the next box. The exception is if the octet you need is only 1 or two digits. I E: 1 9 2, it'll then move on it's own. 1 6 8, it'll move on it's own. 1, now, you only did one digit: 1. So now you'll have to double tap manually in the fourth box to move focus. This all is accessible up to this point. Once done, you'll get a screen on your I O S device telling you to type a code in on your mac. Just go to the mac keyboard and type it. You don't have to hit return when done. It'll just go. Now you're connected. Now here is where things get really really weird. If you flick to the top left of the screen, you'll see a thing that says airplay. This is *not!* an airplay button. This is actually the button the toggles your keyboard on or off screen. Say you want to type something into your mac. This is how you'd toggle on the keyboard to do it. Once the keyboard is up, flicking all the way to the left will give you an airplay icon. which again, will toggle off the keyboard. That's really bizarre why it works that way, I know, but it does, so, deal with it. While in the keyboard, beside air play, you'll also see icons for command, escape, and option, as well as tab. Obviously, tab does what it says if double tapped. command and option will do like the shift key and lock until either double tapped again, or another key is pressed in combination. I don't know about your arrow keys, or you hom/page up or such, I don't think there is an fn key, and F1 through F12 don't seem to be there either. Forget F13-F15. If you have an IPhone 4S, you will have the dictate button to the left of the space bar, but I dono how reliable it'll be. In theory, it should work. In practice though, I don't know. Beside the airplay button when the keyboard isn't up, is the settings button. That takes you right back where we just were. in the top right corner, there is an icon for play/pause.

Before this, you have a button to choose the application to control. I don't know what all's there, but you have things like Front row, ITunes, Quicktime, DVD Player, and I think a few more. You can't add apps to it that I know of. Near the top center of the screen, there is a cross shaped cntrol. Voiceover won't even see this, even if you flick around or slide your finger around, so don't even attempt. This is why I say, for me, it works as I have just enough vision to use it, but if you'rew total, it's probably not gonna work for you. And the buttons can be missed if you're a little off set. They're not huge buttons. They're just normal size. The top of the cross is volume up, the bottom is volume down. The left of the cross is previous track, or chapter depending on the app you're in, and the right is next. The very smack center of the cross is play pause. Also don't forget about that button in the top right corner. That isn't a part of the cross, but it also seems to be play/pause. There is one button below the volume down part of the cross, but tapping it isn't doing much. I know it's getting pressed as I do hear the audible click when I hit it. It just doesn't seem to be doing anything that I can see. There is also a button there that says connection, although again, I didn't find it really did anything when tapped, but that could be as I tried it with Vo turned on. The thing is, you'll have to turn off voiceover then dead recken your cross buttons in order to get any functionalityh to work. If you're total, and can't see where that cross is, it's gonna make it really really difficult, if not impossible.

The app's 5 bucks, so, yeah, I dono... some of you may like it. It's good for what it is, but just be ware of it's difficulty of use. I'v not found out yet how to get where the apple TV can be controlled. That's the next thing on my agenda. It says it can be done, the question is just, how. Sorry for the real lengthy explaination, but I wanted to be sure I was extremely step by step thorough on this, as it is a bit of a brat to set up.