HippoRemote Blog

We don’t talk a lot about Hippo Basic, and I’m not really sure why. We’ve worked hard on it and I’m very happy with the end result.

Lots of apps in the App Store have a base version and a pro version, where the pro version is the base version with more features. Hippo Basic and Hippo Pro certainly have many overlapping features, but we also put features into Basic that are not in Pro. Why? Because we don’t view Basic as a lesser Pro. We view the two to be complementary apps.

Pro is obviously optimized for controlling media Macs and PCs. It’s designed for one-handed operation, like the traditional remote control that everyone is accustomed to. And though they are there, in the majority of my time using Pro, I never need to access the keyboard or trackpad.

Basic, on the other hand, takes the opposite approach. With the full-screen arrow pad, it can work extremely well as a remote, but it’s first and foremost intent is to be a fantastic replacement for your keyboard and mouse.

In other words, Pro is a remote with keyboard and mouse functions. And Basic is a keyboard and mouse with remote functions. The difference is subtle, but this is the perspective that informs our design choices.

That said, what’s new in Basic v2.0? 

First, big enhancements to the trackpad. We’ve redone the gesture handling to be more responsive and more accurate. And we’ve added even more multi-touch gestures. For example, Mac users can now activate Expose, show the desktop, or switch between open programs with four-finger swipes, just like you can with the multi-touch trackpad on MacBooks. Windows users the the same functionality, and you don’t even need to buy a Mac!

Second, you can now assign keyboard shortcuts and macros to gestures. This is a great productivity enhancer since you can execute frequently used commands without having to switch to the keyboard or hunt for buttons.

And lastly, we’ve included the Hippo Store where you can purchase the Boxee, Browser and Twitter Plugins we introduced with Pro. You can pick a la carte the features you want. Want to use our fantastic Boxee gesture pad, but don’t need all the App Profiles in Pro? Now you can!

Note that Plugin purchases apply to your iTunes account. This means if you run Basic on multiple devices, purchasing the plugin once will enable it for all of them.