Do Even More with iCloud and AirPlay - iConnected: Use AirPlay, iCloud, Apps, and More to Bring Your Apple Devices Together - page 206

Remote Control
In Chapter 4 , I explained how to control your living room's home entertainment gear with iOS
apps. But maybe you don't want to use your iOS device as a universal remote — that could interrupt
your web surfing or game playing, for example. So you may want a separate universal remote, such as
the $249 Logitech Harmony Touch . Like iOS-controlled remote apps, the Harmony Touch comes
ready to handle common devices with preset functions and can quickly learn the commands for other
devices, as well as let you build more complex command sets such as turning on the stereo, TV, and
Blu-ray player at the same time.
But there are other forms of remote control beyond home entertainment gear.
Share screens with a remote Mac using Back to My Mac
As well as accessing files on your other computers remotely, you can view the screen of a remote
computer using OS X's Back to My Mac capability covered in Chapter 8 . This lets you run an app
your current computer doesn't have but a remote Mac does.
You can also use screen sharing to avoid slow file transfers between Macs when using the remote
file-sharing features of Back to My Mac. Let's say you're in a coffee bar with a poor Internet connec-
tion: Transferring a large file from your home iMac to your MacBook with Back to My Mac could take
six grande lattes! Instead, because your home iMac is connected to a faster network (I assume), you
can use the Screen Sharing feature of Back to My Mac to send the file to another location such as
Dropbox or other cloud-based storage service to speed up things. Use the faster connection on your
home iMac to upload the file and the faster servers of your cloud-storage service to download it to
your MacBook via the crappy café Wi-Fi network. In principle, the process should be faster than
simply dragging the file to your desktop from the Finder.
Screen Sharing also can help you with things like remotely shutting down a computer you left on
accidentally (or after its backup is complete), sending e-mails from an account on your home com-
puter not also on your current computer, and adjusting network settings.
If your Macs are set up for Back to My Mac, as explained in Chapter 8 , here's how to use screen
sharing:
1. Click All to see the available Macs on the local network as well as found by Back to My Mac.
2. Click the name of the Mac you want to connect to.
3. Click the Share Screen button.
4. Sign in with your username and password or Apple ID. (If another person is signed in to
that Mac, you can still sign in to your own account without interrupting the other user.) The
screen-sharing window appears, showing the desktop of your remote Mac (see Figure 9-2).