As many of you probably know by now I’ve been moaning about “Apple Remote” for a while saying it was next to useless in the real world and what Apple should have created was an Apple Keynote Remote.

Well they have, and it was announced at MacWorld yesterday – so I bought it and quickly set about testing it.

And I have to say, if the Apple Remote is useless, this Keynote Remote is next to useless & I really wanted to like it.

When I first fired it up, I received a message saying “No WiFi connection, you must have wifi to use Keynote Remote” – funny I thought, I’m on wifi – there are little wave signals at the top of the screen. Not a good start, and to be honest I didn’t get much better from there. I restarted the app and headed to the settings for Keynote Remote and created a link with Keynote (NOTE: this ONLY works with Keynote 09). This time I had WiFi and the connection was made.

Keynote Remote settings screen

I opened a Keynote slide show and then picked up my iPhone. Starting Keynote Remote I was prompted with a screen asking to Control Keynote – I clicked this button and the presentation started. I had set the settings to landscape so this is what I saw first up.

Keynote Remote in Landscape mode

Now surprisingly the screen is actually big enough to see enough of the content on there to know what’s coming, which is great … however there are some flaws here. Below each screen there are the words Next & Current – I tried clicking Next .. nothing happened. I tried to click the slide, nothing happened, then it dawned on me I have to flick the slide right to left to get it to go to the next slide. Now I don’t know about you but I think it’s going to take a little bit for me to get used to that – clicking is a much easier action when you are presenting and being discreet about changing slides.

Keynote in Portrait mode

In portrait mode you can see the presenter notes on screen and can scroll through them by flicking, however you also have to flick to get your presentation to move forward or back.

Summary

• Wont wake the wifi connection: I’ve found with my iPhone if I leave it sitting for a while it’ll switch off wifi to 3G until an app like Mail or Safari force it back to wifi (I wonder if this is a power saving feature?) Keynote Remote can’t make the iPhone rejoin Wifi – I have to close it, open mail and go back.
• No extra data in landscape mode: there seems to be no way to get presenter data such as timings, and no way to skip forward or back X number of slides (eg: I want to skip the next slide)
• Flicking left and right to change slides: not as discreet as clicking a button, and too easy to change 2 slides rather than one (that might be me, I tend to drop my thumb back on the iPhone which is read as a flick)
• $0.99: it’s ridiculous for Apple to charge for this app, after all they don’t charge for Apple Remote – so why this?

Okay so it’s probably NOT next to useless, in fact it’s probably half decent, it just feels .. lacking. Then again how many other presenter remotes do you know that have a beautiful screen showing you what’s on screen & what’s up next?

There you go, my thoughts on the new Keynote Remote. You can get it from the App Store now for $0.99.