In 1973, a Motorola engineer named Martin Cooper invented the mobile phone. Almost forty years later, we continue to quaintly refer to the descendants of his breakthrough as “phones,” even though that name doesn’t begin to convey their awesome versatility. Sure, you can still make calls on today’s smart phones. But they’re also Web browsers, cameras, camcorders, media players, musical instruments, navigation systems, game boxes, memory aids, and a whole lot more. And nifty new ways to use them arrive daily.
Of all the tricks that phones can do, nothing appeals to me more than using them as truly universal remote controls, capable of doing everything from unlocking doors to adjusting the thermostat to starting your car. All of this is possible right now — but only with high-tech door locks, thermostats, and cars that most of us don’t yet have. So I keep coming back to a more mundane application that’s easier to make happen: using a phone to control a TV and related accouterments such as a cable set-top box and DVR.
Most of the many products that let you do this are modernized twists on the traditional universal remotes that have been around since the 1980s — the ones that bulge with buttons for every possible purpose. The L5 Remote, for instance, is a $59.95 infrared adapter that plugs into an iPhone’s Dock Connector, so you can point your phone at your TV and other electronics to control them. Like a classic universal remote, you can configure the L5 Remote’s app to work with whatever devices you’ve got. But you can also customize it by picking and choosing buttons and shuffling them around onscreen into a layout that makes sense to you.
Ultimately, though, phone-based remote controls that simply mimic the buttons from a traditional remote on a phone’s touchscreen aren’t thinking big enough. Why replicate such an ungainly interface when a phone is capable of so much more?
Enter Peel, a $99.95 remote system that works with iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads, with support for Android phones on the way. Created by former Apple engineers, it’s an ambitious hardware-and-software combo that aims to free you not only from juggling multiple remotes but also from the tyranny of onscreen programming guides that organize thousands of shows and hundreds of channels into a monotonous grid that does nothing to help you find what you want to watch.
Peel isn’t perfect, but it’s the most thorough rethinking of what a remote control should be since Logitech’s Harmony introduced the idea of programming a universal remote over the Internet a decade ago. If you’re intrigued but don’t want to plunk down a hundred bucks to try it, you can download the software from Apple’s App Store for free; you’ll just have to change the channels yourself with the remote control you already have.
At the moment, Peel works with the iPhone and iPod Touch; an Android version is in the works. The hardware includes a little infrared transceiver — Peel calls it a Fruit, though it looks like a shrunken bowling ball to me — that you place within line-of-sight range of your TV, set-top box, and other entertainment gear. It runs off a C-cell battery, so you don’t need to plug it into the wall. Wireless communications between your iPhone and the Fruit are established by the Peel Cable, a hot dog-shaped doohickey that plugs into your Wi-Fi router. This all may sound a tad complicated, but it took me about five minutes to set up, and I didn’t need to futz with Wi-Fi passwords or other networking arcana.
