All Articles Tagged controller
Casey’s shown us the iControlPad already, but it looks like accessory heavyweight Belkin may be getting ready to throw a gaming controller of their own at the iPhone. According to TouchArcade, JoyPod would be a heck of a lot smaller than iControlPad (by covering the top and bottom, non-screen areas of the iPhone), and feature 6 front buttons (8 total), audio out, and a dock pass-through. Most importantly:
Belkin’s involvement certainly suggests that Apple will be building support into the official SDK to allow App Store games to take full advantage of these controllers.
Up until now, of course, gamers have pretty much been limited to accelerometer tilt and multi-touch based gaming on the iPhone using the accelerometer and tap/pinch/swipe screen interface, so no doubt those hungry for more traditional control schemes will welcome this news. However, since we haven’t seen anything that suggests Apple support for it in the still upcoming 2.1 firmware, JoyPod may not be landing anytime soon.
And that’s assuming Steve Jobs would ever authorize something with that many buttons…
Epic YES! Since the moment the original iPhone came out with its WiFi goodness, I’ve been begging asking for a way to use the iPhone to control the similarly connected iTunes, Front Row, and Apple TV. And now Apple has answered! (Er… except for Front Row, see below). And not only for the iPhone. While I’ll use that term exclusively below, everything here also applies to the iPod Touch.
Remote is FREE, and available either via iTunes (picture above) or right from your iPhone 3G via the App Store. It’s not hard to find, currently dominating the Top Free Apps charts. If you’re not sure how to use App Store yet, check out Brian’s excellent overview to get you started.
I chose to download directly from the iPhone so I could test out the 3G experience. It was fast. (However, when I later synced back with iTunes — my first time post App download — I was asked to re-authenticate my MacBook with the iTunes Store before it would sync the App for backup).
How did it work? Read on!
