HippoRemote Blog

Hey Linux fans! HippoRemote Pro user Andrew Maxwell has created a profile for the Totem Movie Player.

You can grab it from his blog:

http://www.andrewcmaxwell.com/2010/06/hippo-remote-profile-totem-movie-player/

Thanks Andrew!

HippoRemote Pro 2.3 has been approved by Apple and should be available on the App Store shortly (if it’s not already there)! There are a ton of significant changes, particularly under-the-hood speed and performance improvements. But there are a number of noteworthy new features as well. Let’s go over them!

FAST APP SWITCHING & FAST RECONNECT:

The biggest new feature is support for iOS 4 multitasking. How multitasking works on the iPhone has been covered extensively by other sites, but the key point is that it’s a bit different than what you and I are used to on Macs and PCs.

You still can’t quite run multiple apps simultaneously on an iPhone. But with a feature called Fast App Switching, Apple has provided a means to greatly reduce the delay when switching between apps. Prior to iOS 4, switching apps meant quitting the current app, launching a new app, and waiting for it to load. Switching frequently meant you spent an inordinate amount of time waiting for apps to finish launching. In iOS 4, Apple has eliminated the wait. Instead of quitting and relaunching, apps are frozen when you leave them and “reheated” when you return. Since you don’t have to relaunch the app, you can pick up exactly where you left off with minimal delay.

Fast App Switching is relatively straightforward to implement for basic apps, but it’s a bit trickier for HippoRemote since it has to maintain a connection to your computer. Keeping the connection open while frozen is disallowed by Apple and unnecessarily drains your battery. But having to choose a connection every time you return to HippoRemote is annoying. To solve this, we created a feature called Fast Reconnect. HippoRemote detects that you’re switching back and forth between apps and saves off connection information so that it can automatically reconnect you super quickly.

Fast Reconnect is extremely fast and extremely convenient. So convenient, in fact, that we brought it to non-iOS 4 devices. Even if you’re using an older iPhone or iPod touch that doesn’t have multitasking, you’ll still be able to switch in & out of HippoRemote quickly.

DISCONNECT BUTTON:

Fast App Switching and Fast Reconnect is great, but they do introduce one piece of complexity for people who control multiple computers. Previously, to connect to a different computer, you simply restarted HippoRemote and picked another connection. But with Fast Reconnect, you won’t always get that option. So we’ve added a disconnect button. Two, in fact. One in the settings screen, and one on the Shake Menu.

REVAMPED KEYBOARD:

The HippoRemote keyboard has been overhauled under-the-hood. We’ve both simplified and improved the keyboard. Previously, there were two modes – live and buffered – and auto-correction and certain international keyboards would only work in one mode and not the other.

Now, we’ve eliminated modes. You just type. If you turn on auto-correction and international keyboard support, they just work. You can cut & paste. You can edit the beginning, middle or end of the text and HippoRemote automatically mirrors the changes to your computer.

TEXTEXPANDER SUPPORT:

An additional bonus of our improved keyboard is TextExpander support. If you haven’t heard of TextExpander, it’s a wonderful utility that lets you save and quickly retype snippets of text. It’s a must have for heavy typists on the Mac. TextExpander touch for iPhone brings your snippets to the phone, letting you quickly enter your text in a variety of apps. And now with TextExpander support built into HippoRemote, you can take your snippets with you to ANY computer. Including Windows and Linux PCs.

The promise of software keyboards is to be smarter and more efficient than their physical counterparts. With built-in keyboard history and now TextExpander support, the HippoRemote keyboard is the most productive and efficient keyboard available.

WRAPUP:

Thanks for making it all the way to the end! It’s a long post for a 0.1 update, but we packed a bunch of stuff into it. We hope you find them useful! And as always, we’d love to hear your feedback, so email us at hipporemote@robohippo.com with your comments, suggestions, and ideas!

A user wrote in to tell us that the volume up button was no longer working in the Pandora profile. We’ve updated the profile to address this issue. Grab it here.

Unfortunately, it’s not a 100% fix. Seems like the folks at Pandora made some changes to their audio player that make it less responsive to the up arrow key (which increases audio volume). Even on a physical keyboard, tapping the up arrow key does nothing. I have to hold down the key for a while before the volume increases. The same is true for the profile.

If you’re a fan of old school side-scrolling platformers, you’ll love Rocket Knight. It’s a sequel to the Sega Genesis classic Rocket Knight Adventures, and combines the classic gameplay with a gorgeous graphics upgrade.

The keyboard controls are rather frustrating — the game was clearly designed to be played with a gamepad. And with this new profile, HippoRemote Pro fits the bill perfectly.

Rocket Knight for PC is currently available on Steam.

Grab the profile here.

In case you missed it, Clicker announced a TV-optimized version of their web site — Clicker.tv — at last week’s Google I/O conference.

With interface and keyboard controls implemented using HTML5, I can browse Clicker’s database of online videos Flash-free. No incessant CPU and GPU fan noise. Actually watching videos, however, inevitably kicks the fans into high gear.

Grab the profile here.

Thanks go to Krunoslav Labazan for creating a profile for GOM Player.

Grab it from our profile repository.

HippoRemote Pro 2.2 has been approved by Apple! This means that all the Game Controller goodness we talked about in our previous post is ready to go!

We’ve got four game profiles available, and a few more still in the works. The current profiles are Braid, Trine, The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, and Portal. Three outstanding (and inexpensive) indie games, and one of the greatest games of all time.

Get Portal For Free!

With the release of Steam for Mac last week, Portal is FREE until May 24th! So click on the link below and grab it now!

http://store.steampowered.com/freeportal/

Then grab our Portal profile and start unlocking those achievements! And keep in touch by adding HippoRemote to your Steam friends. =)

Mac HippoVNC Update

On the topic of Mac gaming, our testing with Steam uncovered some mouse control issues. We’ve fixed them, but Mac users will need to update HippoVNC. If you’re not using HippoVNC, then games like Portal will not be playable. Screen Sharing simply doesn’t support the necessary functionality.

Creating Game Profiles

Of the four available profiles, two are keyboard only games and the other two require simultaneous keyboard and mouse control. Hopefully they will serve as good starting points for your own game profiles. We’ll also be adding more instructions and documentation but we’re currently away on a semi-vacation. We’ll get right on it when we’re back in town, but until then, please be patient. Thanks!

We are answering emails, though with a little bit of a delay. So if you need help getting your game profile up and running, drop us a line.

Limitations

There are some limitations to the game controller. First, it’s not compatible with every game. In particular, really old games and emulators are not supported.

Second, as mentioned above, HippoVNC is required. Standard VNC servers don’t support the necessary control methods to make gaming possible.

Third, on the Mac, certain games that change the screen resolution when going into full screen mode may not work correctly. It’s something we’re looking into.

So let me get right to it: We’re adding a game controller in our next HippoRemote Pro update! Soon, you’ll be able to play your favorite PC games from the comfort of your couch. No more keyboard and mouse to tether you to your desk.

There are a number of gamepad apps available in the App Store. Virtually all of them have a directional pad on the left, a button pad on the right, and some miscellaneous buttons in between. And our controller has them as well.

HOWEVER, our gamepad has an additional mode that combines a d-pad with a multi-touch trackpad. So you’ll be able to play all those games that rely on simultaneous keyboard and mouse access, including first person shooters like Portal and Team Fortress 2.

And because our gamepad leverages App Profiles, it’s customized for each game, giving you the exact controls you need.

Now, we’re just a small indie developer and we simply don’t have the resources to make profiles for all the PC games out there today, so we’re asking for your help. We’ll be posting instructions on how to create gamepad-enabled profiles on our website and answering any questions via email.

One final thing…

You may have noticed that we mentioned Portal and Team Fortress 2 earlier — games that are available as part of Steam for Mac. Steam for Mac is a big moment for Mac gaming and we desperately want to support it. In fact, our gamepad update was already under review with Apple. But with Steam for Mac releasing today, we’ve pulled our update to do additional Mac testing with the initial set of games. With any luck, the process will be smooth and painless and we’ll ready to resubmit shortly. Regardless, know that we’re working hard so that Mac and PC gamers can play!

I generally don’t like talking about things before they are done, since as a small company our plans and priorities can change rather suddenly. Plus, our development style is pretty experimental. We try a lot of things and end up throwing away most of them because they don’t end up working as well as we initially imagined.

That said, a lot of folks have been asking about our iPad plans and rather than continually responding with no comment, I figure I would just lay bare what we know right now (which isn’t a whole lot).

Are we working on an iPad version of HippoRemote?
Yes.

When will it be ready?
When we’re happy with it.

Will it be a universal app?
We haven’t decided. We’re not thinking about anything other than making an app we love using every day.

So there it is — our iPad Plan. It’s not much, but it’s all we have right now.

Typing logins and passwords with the iPhone can be a real pain. So let HippoRemote do the work for you! Store your logins in the Login Manager and enter them with a single tap.

It’s just one of the many thoughtful features we’ve put into HippoRemote Pro. See our previous web ads featuring Pause On Call and the Proximity Sensor. Or visit our videos page for in-depth demonstrations.

With our Proximity Sensor, keep HippoRemote Pro running without worrying about your battery.

Also be sure to check out Web Ad #1.

To enable the Proximity Sensor, go into HippoRemote Pro’s settings, scroll down the the Misc Settings section, enable Stay Awake, then enable the Proximity Sensor option.

We had a bit of fun making really short videos highlighting some of the unique features of HippoRemote Pro.

Here’s the first:

To enable Pause on Call, go into HippoRemote Pro’s settings, scroll down to the Misc Settings section, enable Stay Awake, and then enable Pause on Call.

HippoRemote Pro 2.1 is now available in the App Store! We’ve fixed some bugs and made some performance improvements, but the big new feature in this release is the GesturePad Plugin!

The GesturePad Plugin offers the same flicking & swiping control as the Boxee Plugin except that it can be configured to work with apps other than Boxee! The first GesturePad-enabled profile we are releasing is for Hulu Desktop. You can download it directly to Hippo Pro by tapping on the “+” button in the profiles screen. We’ll be releasing more over time as it takes quite a bit of tweaking to get these gesture-enabled profiles just right. Also, not every app is suited to gesture-based control. Some programs just work better with buttons.

In the meantime, let us know what you think! We’d love to have some feedback.

The story behind LITE

Last week, we released HippoRemote LITE, a free (ad-supported) version of HippoRemote. The story behind LITE is that it was totally unplanned. LITE was not on our “product roadmap”, so to speak. In fact, we didn’t think we would ever do free apps. Call us crazy, but we still believe in the concept of charging a (non-zero) price for our products. Ridiculous, right?

So then why did we create LITE? We were heads down, thick in development, trying to get our updates to Hippo Pro and Hippo Basic out the door when we started hearing about this Touch Mouse app on Twitter. It was by Logitech and it was free and people were tweeting about it left and right. So we took a look…

As indie developers, we know how tough it is to create an app of any kind, especially with limited resources. We have great respect for the work of our fellow devs. But a global multi-billion dollar company should be held to a higher standard in terms of polish and attention to detail. And Touch Mouse, well, even for free it still left a bad taste.

We thought we could do better and more importantly, we believe customers deserve better. And so LITE was born. It has the same ultra-smooth trackpad and smart keyboard as Basic and Pro, with two-finger scrolling, pinching and international language support, as well as Wake-on-LAN, Split-Screen Mode, and Shake-to-Toggle keyboard access. And it’s easy to add more functionality via the built-in Hippo Store.

This is our first foray into free apps and we really don’t know anything about how this half of the App Store works. We might be doing everything wrong. If so, let us know! (Some of you already have. ☺) We want to hear your thoughts on the matter.

What does this have to do with Basic?

Even after we decided to create LITE, we were so focused on finishing development and getting our apps out the door that we never stopped to consider its impact on Basic. We just forged ahead with the original plan. Now that we have a moment to step back and survey things, it’s apparent to us that we need to make some changes…

Basic originally was intended as a low-cost way for people to get to know us. The way App Store pricing has gone, $5 (for HippoRemote Pro) is considered expensive and people understandably don’t want to get taken by an unknown developer. So it was important to keep the price low. But we wanted to offer the new plugins we created. So we decided to make them available as in-app purchases.

Now that we have LITE, the original pricing motivation for Basic is moot. In fact, Basic as a whole seems a bit redundant. So the question is: What should we do with it? Should we even keep it around? One possible option is to drop Basic entirely. But that would strand all our existing customers, which we won’t do.

When do we get to the part about FREE PLUGINS?

So this is what we’ve decided to do. With our next update to Basic, we will include all the plugins — Browser, Twitter, & Boxee — as standard components. No more in-app purchases. We will also raise the price of Basic from $1 to $3 — a 25% “bulk discount” over upgrading LITE piecemeal.

In the meantime, we will continue to keep Basic at $1. This means you can buy Basic now for $1 and get the Boxee, Browser, and Twitter plugins for FREE when Basic is updated. You can still buy the plugins now if you really need them right away. But if you just sit tight and wait for us to finish coding and testing, and for Apple to approve the update, you’ll get all that functionality. For FREE.

Hmm…maybe we’re starting to get this “free” thing after all.

Hey Linux folks, thanks to Mark Crowther, we now have a MythTV profile. Grab it here.