Renewed Vision recently updated ProPresenter and made available a remote application that runs on the iPhone. I got a chance to use the remote in a real environment on Christmas Eve during the runthrough for our 11pm service. I've got to say overall I was very impressed. It let me flip through slides for the band without having to sit in the booth. In the past I've used Screen Sharing on the Mac to get out of the booth for a runthrough, but Wednesday I wanted to be able to walk around the room, not just sit at a laptop. Overall I was really happy with the performance of the remote. It's incredibly easy to use and very responsive. I'm not sure it's ready for production use (it crashed twice in 40 minutes), but in a pinch it's better than nothing. The remote offers both a view and a control mode letting somebody with an iPhone or iPod Touch either control slide display or review data. The remote is an extra purchase, but it's under $5 on the iTunes App Store. The remote is a great tool and I'm excited to be able to use it more. Some features I'd like to see:
- ability to show and hide the output window
- confidence monitor mode – that uses the iPhone screen to display the main output content
- ability to edit slides from the remote would be awesome
- saved passwords for quicker connections (especially given crashes)