Reverse VNC for iPads? Alternative Keyboard?
 

My elderly mother wants an iPad, so we purchased her one this morning at Target. Now I'm seeing that it's going to be very confusing for her at first.

I am looking for a screen-sharing application, so we can help her remotely. The App Store has several VNC apps, but they all are designed to let an iPad user control their Mac or PC.

Is there an app that lets you do the reverse -- control an iPad remotely using a Mac or PC?

Another wishful thinking question: Is there an app that changes the keyboard to have forward delete and cursor keys?

Thank you.

I bought one for my 95 yr old grandmother. She uses it really to play bingo and other games( which I loaded the app for her before I gave it to her) the ipod, which i loaded music for her and for reading. I taught her how to use the kindle app and I order the books remotely for her from home and she just hits the sync button.


I haven't heard of remotely controlling an Ipad, interesting concept though.

there is if you jailbreak it (at least for iphones, i assume it's been updated for ipads). otherwise no. how well it works, i have no idea. it's not officially supported.

should you choose to jailbreak it, be aware that if you bought an ipad in the past month or two, it came with ios firmware version 3.2.2 which cannot be jailbroken. however, a jailbreak for it is expected 'soon,' possibly not until the next version of the firmware (ios 4.2), when it's released next month.

some apps offer cursor keys, including iA Writer, but nothing system-wide.

another option is try pairing it with a bluetooth keyboard, but i'm not sure if the cursor keys work.

What's the name of the jailbreak app?

it's called veency, and i assumed wrong. it doesn't look like it has been updated for the ipad.

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/09/18/veenc...er-for-iphone/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o9IqLm24uI

Finger Tap Mystery
 

I am the OP, and my mom is now up and running (if hunt-and-peck counts as "running") on the iPad. But there is a mystery:

The iPad, like the iPhone, has a sort of home page where you see a lot of icons that represent apps. I (and everyone else I know) tap an icon and the corresponding app launches.

When my mom taps an icon, at least half the time the keyboard appears. She has to swish to the left to get back to the home page.

I have watched this up close several times, and I can't figure out what she is doing that brings up the keyboard. Any ideas??


(As an aside, it turns out to be very easy for a person with diminished fingertip sensitivity to inadvertently brush the screen while typing and thereby enter random characters without realizing it.)

that's the spotlight search page, where you can search for apps, email, notes, songs, etc.

it is logically to the left of the first home screen (there can be multiple pages of apps). if you press the home button when you're on the first home screen, it will slide over to the spotlight page. press it again and it goes back to the home screen.

what she is probably doing is tapping an icon but missing it just enough so it hits the background instead of the icon, with the tap having enough side movement to be taken as a swipe (and it doesn't appear to need all that much). with only one page of apps (until you download more), a tap with a leftish movement won't swipe the other direction.

This may be too little too late (and it certainly ain't VNC) but after reading this NYT article I'm planning to put some "training wheels" on the iPad I buy for my father.

That may well be what's going on. Perhaps her fingernail is hitting first, followed milliseconds later by her finger pad itself offset horizontally, which the iPad is interpreting as a swish.

Training Wheels
 

Thank you for posting the link boberonicus, the article has some useful ideas. I'm not sure I would mark the on-off button, since the Change Apps button turns on the iPad and it shuts itself off automatically.

I may, or maybe not, mark the lock switch on the side that prevents screen orientation.

The NYT author uses address labels, I'm inclined to use the sticky area of PostIt notes pages.

jailbreakme.com doesn't work? Go there in safari on the ipad, and if it offers to jailbreak your device, it will do it.

-David

not anymore. the exploit it used was patched and sales are far too brisk to luck out and get one with an older firmware.