App Review: Touch Mouse
05. Feb, 2010 | by Cam Bunton
5 Comments
Category: Utilities
Price: FREE
TiP Rating: 4/5 stars
Release Date: 1/12/2010
Version: 1.0
Seller: Logitech Inc.
Rated: 4+
Requirements: iPhone or iPod Touch, requires OS 3.0 or later.
App Store Description: Touch Mouse by Logitech turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into a wireless trackpad or keyboard for your keyboard.
Summary: Quite often when I’ve had a busy day, and I’m feeling a little lazy I don’t particularly want to sit with my laptop on my knees; I’d rather just leave it on a coffee table and control it from my couch. Using your local Wi-Fi network, Touch Mouse connects to your chosen computer, so you don’t even have to be in the same room to control your laptop/desktop. (Although, how would you see what you’re doing with the cursor? But that’s a minor point…) It isn’t perfect by any means, but it is very usable and doesn’t require a PhD to run it.
Review: Touch Mouse is an incredibly easy app with a foolproof UI (User Interface) that replaces the need to use your laptop’s trackpad or your mouse. I’m sure you all, like me, have been in a position where you just sat down on the couch, and then remembered you needed to send a quick email. Or you’ve hooked your computer to your LCD TV and want to browse the web without getting up. If so, this is the answer for your mild frustrations.
To use Touch Mouse, you first have to download the server to your chosen computer. The server runs on Mac OSX 10.4 or higher, Windows XP, Vista and 7. Once you have installed the server, open it, and then open the app on your phone.
The look and feel is very minimalist. When using the mouse function, the screen is almost completely black, with dividing lines between the ‘mouse buttons.’ On the menu bar at the bottom of the screen you can access the keyboard, disconnect or open up the settings menu. The settings menu in itself is a great tool on this app, and it gives you so many options. There are button options to enable the third button, swap the primary button if you’re left-handed, or switch off the labels. Using the settings menu, you can also stop it from sleeping, switch on sound, change tracking and scrolling speeds, pretty much anything you can do with your current trackpad. Two finger scrolling is incredibly easy. (If they’d missed out that feature for Mac users, it would have been a virtually pointless and frustrating app.)
I have used other similar programs in the past, but none of them were as user-friendly as this. The keyboard is fantastic, it comes up with your usual iPhone QWERTY keyboard, but with added extras like the ‘Ctrl’ ‘Opt’ and ‘Apple/CMD’ key. What makes it particularly great is the word-viewing feature. Whenever you type anything, it not only comes up on your computer screen, but it also shows up on your phone, so you don’t even have to look at your monitor. I also have to mention that Touch Mouse has an auto-rotate function, and so if you find it less tiresome, you can have the keyboard in landscape mode.
No app I’ve used has ever been perfect, and this one is no different. Logitech could improve this tool very slightly. Although wireless internet is very common these days, there are still places you may not be able to use it. In these cases, having the option to use the mouse program via Bluetooth would be convenient. The CAPS key works the same as your computer’s and not like the iPhone’s, which does make it a little irritating if you’re used to only pressing it once on your phone. This app forces you to press twice to switch it back off again. One other minor thing: The letters on the screen could be a little smaller to allow space for a greater number of words.
But there’s nothing about Touch Mouse that I think is a major flaw, just a few minor improvements for convenience. Overall I think this app is brilliant, and considering it costs nothing, it’s one of the best free programs I’ve downloaded to date.
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Touch Mouse is okay, but it requires that you run an external application on your Mac to be able to use it.
TouchPad ($4), is much better. It uses the screen sharing function that’s built into Mac OS X in order to connect to your Mac. Setup is quick and easy and it will automatically connect to your Mac whenever you launch it.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/touchpad/id297623931?mt=8
Best mouse app for the iPhone is Mobile Air Mouse, by far! None of the others compare in features and it’s only $2, one of the best bargains in the app store IMHO!
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=289616509&mt=8
Cheers guys, I’ll check these out.
I am not able to get it to run. I get an error: “Connection Failed! Remote host is unreachable.”
Both my PC and iPod are connected to the same wifi network. What should I do??
Does anyone know of a remote mouse app that does not require a wifi network? I do not have wifi at work…do have some sort of wireless network, but am unable to connect.