January 19th, 2009
Jaadu, king of the iPhone VNC apps
I got tired of having to find my Bluetooth keyboard every time I wanted to change the volume on my Mac mini media center setup in my living room so I went on a mission to find the perfect remote control app for the iPhone. I settled on what is probably the best iPhone VNC client anywhere – Jaadu VNC (iTunes, $25).
Jaadu VNC instantly turns your iPhone or iPod touch into a complete remote control interface to your Mac – and it’s killer with a Mac media center. Jaadu gives you full control of your Mac’s mouse and keyboard via the screen of your iPhone. Remote and Modifier keys are just a tap away as are arrow, function and special keys and several convenient shortcuts.
A VNC client allows you to use remote desktop to monitor remote servers, watch flash video or even manage your media library on a far away computer, all from your iPhone. One caveat is that VNC is currently unencrypted so I don’t recommend running it on a machine containing any sensitive data. Jaadu tells me that SSH-based encryption is in the pipeline and should be ready within a month.
Jaadu VNC has the highest video resolution support of any remote desktop app for the iPhone. Some customers have used it with dual 30″ Apple Cinema displays (5120 x 1600 resolution) which would kill the other remote desktop apps which start getting squirrely at around 1680 x 1050.
According to the author, Jaadu VNC’s touchpad interface was heavily inspired by a jailbreak app called Touchpad Pro, which was open source and based on the VNSea code base. Jaadu VNC was re-written from scratch with a number of iPhone-specific optimizations for improved usability, as well as ultra-high resolution support.
Got Windows? No problem. Jaadu Remote Desktop (iTunes, $25) is an iPhone RDP client which supports audio streaming and encryption. Got a Mac but don’t want to pony up $25 for a VNC app? Touchpad Elite (iTunes, $5) is an input-only version of Jaadu VNC that’s a fifth of the price.
Videos of all the features are available. This one’s a keeper folks.
Update: Just to clarify, Jaadu VNC works with both Windows and Mac while Jaadu Remote Desktop is only for Windows.
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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