I've become very accustomed to remote-controlling my computers for a while, but nothing ever seemed to get it right. Apple's Remote for iTunes is great, of course, but what about all my other stuff on my Mac, like Boxee or VLC? Yeah, you can get some specific remotes for those apps (frankly the VLC remotes I've used were terrible and would just quit working sometimes). But what you really want is a master remote that'll take all those tasks over for you. Enter Hippo Remote [iTunes Link], a wonderful, simple, brilliant little remote app for your iPhone or iPod touch and Mac -- or PC.

Hippo Remote starts off as a trackpad, and supports gestures, multi-touch (like scrolling and zooming) and even replicates circular scrolling. There's a keyboard with F-keys, a history and navigation keys. There are app profiles for Powerpoint, Boxee, VLC, even Gmail and Windows Media Center. There's also a login manager for stuff like Gmail or Twitter, so it's very, very fast at getting you to where you need to be all via iPhone screen.

Hippo Remote's response is like butter. Scrolling, swiping, tracking are all wonderful, even on my congested network. I can even use wake-on-LAN or wake-on-wireless to zap those computers alive from anywhere in my house.

All this and the only setup was to add a password for VNC connections in my System Preferences on my Mac. There is a HippoVNC application which enables a few other features, but I don't use it. Instead, I have a saved profile for the Mac I have hooked to my HDTV, and with one tap I'm controlling that Mac via iPhone. It just doesn't get any easier.

Now you can win a copy of Hippo Remote for your own iPhone or iPod touch. Just leave a comment on this post and you're entered. Promo codes are only available for the US, sorry.

• Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older.
• To enter leave a comment on this post.
• The comment must be left before Saturday, November 7, 2009, 11:59PM Eastern Time.
• You may enter only once.
• Five winners will be selected in a random drawing.
• Prize: One promo code for Hippo Remote (Value: US$4.99)
• Click Here for complete Official Rules.

TouchPad [iTunes Link] is my new best friend. It allows you to control the mouse and keyboard on your Mac through your iPhone, as well as Front Row. It is currently on sale in the App Store for $1.99 (50% off) for a "limited time" so you may want to grab it while you can.

At the end of most days, I settle into bed to watch a little TV on my iMac through EyeTV. Last night I was all snuggled under the covers when I realized that I had left the mouse pointer over the video window. EyeTV kept thinking that I wanted to move the "time scrubber" and so it kept popping up the on-screen overlay.

Most of the time I keep an Apple Wireless Keyboard on my nightstand in case I need to control my iMac from bed (don't you judge me!) but the batteries had run out. I pulled myself out of bed, went to the kitchen where the batteries had recharged, put them into my keyboard... and they still didn't work. So I spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out why before I finally gave up.

All I really needed to do was move the mouse off-screen. If I had TouchPad, I could have done that.

When I viewed the webpage and iTunes listing for TouchPad, I wasn't clear how it worked. Turns out it is very simple.

By default, TouchPad works like a touchpad on a Mac laptop. Drag your finger around the iPhone screen and watch the mouse move across your Mac (yes, it supports multiple monitors).

Tap the keyboard icon and the usual iPhone keyboard will appear with the addition of several special keys: escape, tab, shift, control, option, and the classic Mac "cloverleaf" command key. These special control keys are used when you want to access keyboard shortcut such as cmd+space to bring up Spotlight.

Tape the "Play/Pause" icon and you will be presented with what looks like a regular Apple remote control; however, it will only control Front Row. Click "Start" and Front Row will launch on your Mac, and then you can use the TouchPad controls to navigate. Press Quit to exit Front Row.

I was disappointed to see there are no Function keys, making it impossible to change the brightness, or use the play/pause, fast-forward, rewind media keys, or even trigger Exposé or the Dashboard. You can adjust the volume settings if you have it in the menu bar, but that would be a pretty precise "hit" from across the room. It would be a good addition to add a third icon up near the existing two in the top-left (keyboard and Front Row remote) to add the "fn" key plus F1-14 and an eject button.

That said, for $2 this app is a steal. It works quickly, the setup instructions are very straightforward. You can easily control multiple Macs. It supports Leopard and Snow Leopard using Screen Sharing, and it also supports Tiger using Apple Remote Desktop settings.

A quick search of "VNC" in the App Store results in about 25 applications, including Jasdu VNC which appears to be a full VNC client which will put your computer screen on your iPhone (see its website for more information). Very cool, but a costly $25 far more than I would spend without being able to try it out first. (Dear Apple: please give developers a way to offer time-limited demos so we can "try it before we buy it!")

I have not tried all of these VNC applications (I'm sure TUAW readers will let us know in the comments which ones we should check out) but TouchPad is going on the home page of my iPhone, and my Apple Wireless Keyboard has lost its spot on my nightstand. (Another TUAW favorite is HippoRemote which you'll be hearing more about soon. You might want to check it out too!)

Here's an interesting feature of Snow Leopard that you may or may not (probably not) find particularly useful. Apparently after upgrading to 10.6 several users at the Apple Discussion Forums -- mostly owners of Mac mini or MacBook models with the GMA950 graphics subsystem -- are reporting poor performance with Front Row.

The performance issue seems to effect navigation as well as playback, resulting in jerky video/audio in the menu and when watching a movie. This is also not limited to pesky DiVx files or QuickTime plug-ins either, as some users are reporting seeing the problem with iTunes purchases and others are even running a completely stock installation. Interestingly enough, some of the same users with Front Row issues are not seeing the same problems when playing back with QuickTime X.

In my opinion, this is not much of a surprise following such a major upgrade to many of the OS's underpinnings -- including an overhaul to QuickTime on which Front Row is largely based. This is the reason I did not upgrade the Mac mini in my living room. Aside from being a full-time webserver, I also rely on it for multimedia functionality as well.

Some folks with complaints have found solace in either Plex or Boxee as these fine media players do not rely on QuickTime or iTunes. For most though, a working Front Row would be ideal. Personally, I have not checked for problems with Front Row since my multimedia Mac hasn't been upgraded. However, I did note some wonkiness on another machine when using QuickLook to playback some video files through Finder. I have a sneaking suspicion there is something going on related to QuickTime X being used by other programs (i.e. FrontRow or QuickLook). What say you dear readers? Is your Front Row experience causing you grief or are you simply smirking because you haven't received your pre-order upgraded yet?

Thanks to Ivey for sending this in via Twitter.

Got a fancy new Mac with some flavor of DisplayPort connector and a shiny new copy of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard installed? If you do and you also happen to hook said Mac up to an HDTV via an HDMI adapter, then head on over to System Preferences to check out the latest uncovered Snow Leopard nugget of awesomeness.

Three new resolution options are now available for your HDTV-viewing experience: 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. This should be good news for anyone rocking the HTMac set-up, or even for anyone who wants to check it out and may not be fully-versed with some of the issues.

We've tried to reproduce the above using a DVI -> VGA adapter and have thus far found bupkis. We're not sure if this works with DVI -> HDMI either, but we do know it works with DisplayPort -> HDMI. Check it out for yourself and let us know your results.

Thanks to Jay for sending this in via Twitter.

The Mac mini has always been the perfect form factor for a media center appliance (often called a Home Theater PC/HTPC). It's extremely small, almost completely silent and it can easily blend into an existing electronics shelf - or be hidden away completely.

The lack of a refresh (and rumors that the line was going to be discontinued), coupled with technical specs that didn't justify the price-point, have led many would-be HTPCers to write off the Mac mini as an option because they assume it is just too expensive.

However, as more and more content moves online and people become accustomed to getting their media from a computer, the idea of a HTPC is starting to make sense to more and more families. Taking off where netbooks left off, nettops are starting to enter the marketplace. These low-priced machines are diminutive, low-powered and connect easily to a television set. There's just one problem. Although nettops are pretty good at playing back regular video content, they absolutely choke when it comes to Flash, Silverlight or any other streaming content.

Still, when you look at the numbers, nettops aren't much more inexpensive than a Mac mini. You get what you pay for, too: the mini is much more powerful and can actually be used as a workhorse computer.

Thanks to updated hardware and a much-improved graphics chipset, the current revision really hits the sweet-spot for the ultimate HTPC.

Although many of us have longed for Apple to release an official media center product that brings the Mac mini and the Apple TV together, the current Mac mini is more than capable of serving as that product right now.

Now that Apple has allowed the purchase/rental of some high-definition films via iTunes, the media content options for the Mac mini match that of the Apple TV and then some.

Last month, Robert wrote about his experience transforming his "Switcher-Dad's" mini into a nice Mac media center.

In mid-June, my fiance and I bought a 2009 Mac mini (the 1GB 2.0GHz model). For the last few months, I've been testing hardware, accessories and lots and lots of software to make it into the best HTPC around. My goal was simple: my Mac mini needed to work with my existing surround sound setup and it needed to seamlessly connect to the FreeNAS media server where several terabytes of audio and video files reside. It needed to connect and work with our other Macs -- as well as our Windows 7 machines -- and it needed to be silent and simple, with an interface that a visitor or guest could easily suss out.

Read on for tips and tricks to get the most out of your machine's hardware and software, as we transform a 2009 Mac mini into the ultimate HTPC!

Part I: the hardware side

Part II: the software side

Just eight-months after closing a Series A round of financing, media center startup Boxee has just closed another round of financing. The Boxee team has secured another $6 million in funding, led by Boston-based General Catalyst. Given the economic climate (especially for start-ups), two financing rounds in the span of a year is pretty impressive.

What's really exciting, for Mac and Apple TV users (assuming they haven't gone all Aron on us) is that this means that Boxee can now focus on bringing users more features. As a company, they can also hire more developers to continue to make the experience as good as it can be.

I talked to Andrew from Boxee last night and pointed out some of the plans that Boxee has in mind that are really exciting for fans of the home media center space.

• Make the Product Better -- the Boxee beta is scheduled tentatively for later this fall. The goal is to bring the Boxee experience to the mainstream. I often forget that Boxee is still in alpha, but more improvements and refinements to the interface and the platform is just a good thing.
• More Content -- The Hulu kerfuffle notwithstanding, more and more streaming media services are seeing the value in the 10-foot viewing experience. What will separate Boxee from the Vudu or Hulu Desktops of the world is what content it can deliver to users.
• Attract Developers -- Despite launching a big API campaign, the Boxee App Store really hasn't taken off the way that some users (and developers) have hoped. I personally think that the variety of different platforms that are based on the same framework (XBMC) is part of the problem. Deciding to write your plugin for Plex or XBMC or Boxee can be difficult, especially since converting amongst the services is possible, but not easy. The team wants to make this easier.
• Get Boxee on more devices -- The Apple TV and Boxee have been a great match (pure technical limitations for stuff like Netflix and full HD *.MKV files aside), but obviously getting onto more and more devices is the key to keeping development fresh and more content available.

I think Boxee has been a tremendous boon to the Mac and the Apple TV communities (we got it first, which I think was recognition that Mac owners are frequently the first to do lots of HTPC stuff) and in the last few months, Boxee as a platform has really improved.

My forthcoming (I swear!) Ultimate Mac mini HTPC series will dive into some more of my favorite Boxee Apps and features. What are some of your favorite Boxee apps and add-ons so I can make sure to try them out and add them to my list?

A recent post at hicksdesign on turning a Mac Mini into a media center is very serendipitous for me, as I'm currently researching options (and buying hardware) to do just that. I've acquired a Mini, a couple of hardware items that I'm trying to decide between and several software solutions that I'm putting to the test.

The post serves well as an update to some of our previous thoughts and takes into account some hardware and software updates. Among other things, the post discusses the decision between the Apple TV and the Mini, the virtues of Front Row 2, external hardware, and some great software tips.

Admittedly, my current solution is the result of hours of hacking and wiring and runs on a PC. I've been itching for a couple of years to make the whole system Mac-based. The hicksdesign post, along with all of my other research, should lead to a system that puts my current HTPC to shame.

[via 43 Folders]