Veency
Latest
Dear Aunt TUAW: dock my iPhone to my iPad
Dear Aunt TUAW, I wish I could dock my iPhone right into the side or back of a large iPad screen. And then have the iPad run off my phone. That way I could have a large screen when I need it. But when I leave the house for a walk, I could take the smaller device (the iPhone) out and carry it in my pocket. Love and snuggles, Your nephew Gary
iPhone Dev Team's MuscleNerd shows off VNC on iPhone OS 4 beta, hints at jailbreak
We can't get a straight answer on the exact jailbroken status of iPhone OS 4, but MuscleNerd of the iPhone Dev Team (and recent iPad hacking fame) is sure hinting heavily. He's got Veency (a VNC server) and Cydia running on iPhone OS 4 on video, something he claims "you'll only find on JB 4.0." Of course, he also has the dev tools at his disposal and all the bugs and loopholes of an early beta, so we can't be exactly sure what's going on. There's also not much point to releasing an OS 4 beta jailbreak to the public, and MuscleNerd himself recommends not bothering with the betas, as they're "very buggy." Still, it's fun to see these tools alive and well on the newfangled multitasking OS. Check out the video after the break. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
TUAW Tip: Veency remote controls your iPhone from your Mac
Reader Kevin C. sent us a tip the other day -- he recently got a Bose SoundDock II, which is a nice little speaker dock, as a Christmas gift, and he wants to know: with his iPhone sitting all the way across the room, is there any way he can control the iPhone from his Mac? Obviously there are lots of ways to control your Mac with your iPhone, from Apple's official Remote app to multiple VNC programs on the App Store. But in this case, we want to go the other way: control your iPhone's iPod app with a Mac. Turns out there isn't a way to do it -- unless you jailbreak your iPhone. Using Veency, a jailbreak app that Erica covered about a year or so ago, you can head into your iPhone from your Mac and do anything you want, from changing tracks in iTunes to even sending text messages. Here's an older how-to on getting it working. Unfortunately, other than that (according to our research -- commenters feel free to jump in, of course), you're out of luck -- Apple is fine with sending commands from the iPhone to the Mac, but not the other way around. Maybe Bose needs to come up with a way for you to stream music over Bluetooth to their speakers so you can keep your iPhone with you. Update: Our commenters come through as always: Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil will supposedly send audio from your Mac out to your iPhone, and while I haven't tried it myself, we're told that the Bose dock will then play that audio for you. So instead of playing sound on your iPhone, you can just send it music from the Mac and control things that way. And Jeff points out that Belkin makes a Bluetooth dongle, so you can stream music that way as well (and just carry your iPhone with you). So there's a few solutions to try.
Veency: VNC Server for iPhone
We recently got a tip over to this It's Just Poison post about Veency for jailbroken iPhones from Jay "Saurik" Freeman, the author and maintainer of Cydia. Veency provides a VNC remote desktop server for your iPhone, allowing you to connect to the shared screen of your handheld from any VNC client (Apple Remote Desktop, Chicken of the VNC, and more). I downloaded a copy to my iPhone, rebooted and gave it a whirl to see how well it worked using Chicken of the VNC on my Mac. From first go, it did what it promised: offering tap-interpretation of my Mac-based mouse clicks as iPhone-sourced finger taps. The current mouse position on the Mac was echoed as a small "x" on the iPhone, so I could always see where the virtual finger was.
