Splashtop Remote Desktop
Control your computer from your Fondleslab or phone
iOS App of the Week I’ve tried a number of ‘remote desktop’ apps that allow you to control a Mac or a PC from an iPhone or iPad, but their performance over a wireless network has always been too sluggish for them to be of much practical use.
Set-up is effectively automatic on the iDevice
Not surprisingly, then, I was quite sceptical when the recently updated Splashtop was claimed to be fast enough to even stream watchable Flash video to iOS devices. And to other devices - Splashtop Remote Desktop is available on Android too.
Taking control, remotely
However, the inability to watch films in Flash format on my iPad using my LoveFilm account is a never-ending annoyance, so I decided it couldn’t hurt to check out the demo version of Splashtop.
Flash video running in a browser on a Mac on an iPad...
The demo version only allows you to connect to your Mac or PC for five minutes at a time, but that was long enough to convince me to cough up £1.79 for the full iPad version. The iPhone version only costs £1.19.
...even full screen
Like most remote access apps, Splashtop consists of both an iOS app and a server program that you install on your computer. Setting everything up is very easy, as the iOS app can automatically scan your wireless network to detect computers that are running the server. All you need to do then is to create a security password and just let Splashtop take control.
Needless to say, Lovefilm was my first port of call and my gob was genuinely smacked to discover that I really could stream films to the iPad at perfectly watchable speeds.
Splashtop is not just for entertainment apps
After that, firing up Word on my Mac and finishing off this review on the iPad was a piece of cake.
Splashtop does have some rough edges: some of the multi-finger commands used to mimic mouse or keyboard controls on the iPad’s screen are a bit clumsy, and it needs an easier option for showing and hiding the Dock on a Mac desktop.
The mouse-mimicking gestures can be tricky to master
However, I can’t fault the speed and responsiveness of the app itself, and definitely recommend it as the most impressive of the remote control apps currently available. ®
We make our selection of the best iOS smartphone and tablet downloads every Thursday. It you think there's an app we should be considering, please let us know.
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COMMENTS
and its how secure?
So lets get clear, you rate this as 90%, but this is an app that will tunnel through your home firewall and let you connect to your computers inside your home. And yet there is no mention of "security" anywhere in this article.
More scarily, there in no mention of how secure this app is on the the iStore web page, or even the developers own web page.
Going into the support forum it seem there is little / no security by default.
And you still want to install this app??
Leads me to question how you can do a serious review of a product, and not ask the obvious questions, and how it should ever get a 90% rating [Ahh I forgot, features, features and more features], and we wonder why the bad guys have it so easy.......
There's no app for that.
Every time Flash is mentioned in relation to iOS it's about how Lovefilm doesn't work. Can't these guys make an app which allows people to view content in the same way YouTube content can be viewed?
not very good
have you tried to access your PC from another location over the internet? ssssssslow! Didn't expect it to fly, but expected much better response time. Tested it from a number of locations. All had good WiFi signal and speed.
...and, why would I use it on my network, surely, it's easier to walk up to you computer.
As someone said above, no details about the security aspect of the connection etc. so, I've spent £1.19, but the app is not staying on my PC/iPhone.
LogMeIn
In my opinion, the usability of LogmeIn is better.
LogMeIn is much simpler to set-up for use from outside your network as you don't need to know about ports and router setup.
And LogMeIn seems much more secure.
However on your own network Spalshtop is much quicker (as I assume LogMeIn has to go through LogMeIn's servers) and pretty usable for streaming video etc.
I use LogMeIn to adminsiter machines and Splashtop around the house.
LogMeIn - not any more
I have used LogMeIn - and a few other remote access apps too - but none of them match the speed and responsiveness of Splashtop.
That's why I focused on the Flash streaming in the review - to emphasis the sheer speed of the app.
