Product Reviews

Jaadu VNC lets you keep an eye on your Mac from elsewhere in the world via your iPhone, whether you're checking on a lengthy video conversion, recording a TV or radio programme or emailing that important file that you left sitting on the Desktop.

After a little groundwork to configure our router and Mac for VNC, we ran into some trouble connecting to a Mac with a 1920 x 1200 monitor due to 'low resources'. Holding the Home button, as Jaadu advises,

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to quit Mail and Safari reliably cleared this hurdle.

Jaadu excels with its use of gestures for navigation. One finger moves the mouse cursor, while taps and double-taps simulate the left mouse button. Dragging two fingers controls scrollbars, while three-fingered taps zoom in and out of the Desktop to avoid hunting around for small dialog boxes. The cursor carries momentum so it can be thrown over short distances without coming to an abrupt halt.

The iPhone's virtual keyboard is used to enter text, which is superimposed above the keyboard for verification. Since it's missing modifier and function keys, they're replicated in a separate keyboard that shows good consideration for the differences in using a full-size keyboard, as tapping a key twice keeps it held down. We'd like to see these modifications adopted by Apple.

Jaadu's £10 more expensive than Mocha VNC, but its responsive screen redraw and excellent interface will have existing converts nippily navigating around their Mac desktop from anywhere in the world.