Control Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

What is your favorite Siri command?

by Erica Sadun (Oct 19th, 2011)

Siri, Apple's beta voice recognition assistant for iPhone 4S, has gotten a lot of press recently about its snark and humor, but that's not why a lot of us are growing to love this clever bot. For many of us at TUAW, Siri provides a really simple way to accomplish tasks on our iPhones. Here's ...

TUAW's Daily Mac App: Music Commander

by Samuel Gibbs (Jul 1st, 2011)

Controlling iTunes with the keyboard is easy enough, but what if you want a little more information without having to resort to the full iTunes window? Music Commander is here to help. Sitting in the menu bar, Music Commander allows you to control iTunes with an extensive drop-down menu. ...

SpotiMy brings Spotify playback control to the menu bar, but that's it

by Samuel Gibbs (May 23rd, 2011)

Spotify might not have made it across the pond just yet, but that doesn't mean millions of Mac users aren't getting their music fix via the ad-supported or premium streaming service. A new Mac App Store app called SpotiMy aims to enhance the Spotify experience of Mac users by letting them ...

Apple patent suggests multi-touch keyboards might be in the future

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Jan 24th, 2011)

A new Apple patent uncovered by MacRumors showcases the work of FingerWorks, which Apple purchased in 2005. FingerWorks, best known now for being the base of today's gesture-recognition technology, produced the TouchStream multi-touch keyboard early last decade. However, as demonstrated in ...

Apple patent suggests Magic Mouse with display panel

by Mike Schramm (Jan 20th, 2011)

A newly revealed Apple patent has an interesting take on the Magic Mouse: the patent shows a display embedded in its touch surface, creating sort of a mini iPod touch-style interface. It's not clear just how much processing power the display-enabled mouse itself would have, but uses mentioned in ...

Snapstick could use your iPhone to program your television

by Mike Schramm (Dec 10th, 2010)

The video after the break shows off a product called Snapstick, though there's not actually a product yet, just more of an idea. The idea is that you select a bit of web content (like a YouTube video or Hulu show) on your phone, and then use a flicking motion to send that content up to a bigger ...

Algoriddim's djay Remote app available now

by Mike Schramm (Mar 30th, 2010)

One of my favorite apps at Macworld Expo this past February was actually Algoriddim's djay 3 -- it's DJing software for the Mac that had a surprising amount of new features and fun UI elements even in one of the oldest and most-traveled of music software functions. One of the things I got to see ...

GDC 2010: From concept to Top Paid with Unity iPhone

by Mike Schramm (Mar 9th, 2010)

Unity Technologies hosted the sponsored lunch panel during GDC 2010 today, and their "product evangelist" Tom Higgins gave a quick rundown of the software platform that enables developers to assemble and release games extremely quickly on multiple platforms. The company was actually founded in ...

TUAW Tip: Veency remote controls your iPhone from your Mac

by Mike Schramm (Jan 12th, 2010)

Reader Kevin C. sent us a tip the other day -- he recently got a Bose SoundDock II, which is a nice little speaker dock, as a Christmas gift, and he wants to know: with his iPhone sitting all the way across the room, is there any way he can control the iPhone from his Mac? Obviously there are lots ...

The Apple tablet that wasn't

by Mike Schramm (Oct 29th, 2009)

TechCrunch has posted pictures of what they're calling an "unlaunched Apple tablet." In 1990, as the story goes, Apple was supposedly working on a pen-based touchscreen tablet called the Pen Mac that was actually extremely small for the time -- just about an inch thick, with a screen the same size ...

Inside iPhone 3.0: Enhanced controls for podcast & audiobook playback

by Michael Rose (Jun 21st, 2009)

It's on the master list of 3.0 features, but we've been sent enough tips and suggestions about it to conclude that the advanced podcast/audiobook controls came as a pleasant surprise for lots of iPhone and iPod touch owners who upgraded. In the 3.0 version, from the playback display for a podcast, ...

Sway releases a free version

by Mike Schramm (Mar 25th, 2009)

If you haven't yet tried Sway, the game from Illusion Labs and ReadyFireAim, now's the perfect time to do so. They've released a free version of the game that limits you to three levels and just two characters, but it's enough to try out the really unique control scheme. Back when I first posted ...

DOTS gloves let you use your iPhone even when it's cold

by Mike Schramm (Oct 22nd, 2008)

This is pretty brilliant in its own special way. Let's paint the scene -- you're wandering the cold streets of Chicago a few months from now, and you're wondering where the closest pizza place is. You whip out your iPhone to pull up the Google Maps application, but wait -- your hands are covered ...

TUAW Tip: Control the iTunes visualizer

by Cory Bohon (Oct 3rd, 2008)

By now you've probably had the opportunity to play around with the new iTunes Visualizer in iTunes 8. It's pretty cool, eh? Just like the previous visualizer, you can control this one with a few, simple key strokes. By pressing "?" while the visualizer is running, you are presented with a list of ...

Mac 101: Using your Windows keyboard

by Robert Palmer (Sep 11th, 2008)

If you switch frequently between a Mac and a PC, chances are you have to deal with a Windows keyboard from time to time. Thankfully, this can be easy with third-party utilities, or even features already built in to Mac OS X. For most switchers, the hardest part about learning to use a new Mac is ...