Air Login: Superb New Remote Access App for iPad

Air Login is a new remote access app for iPad and iPhone. In fact it’s a great new remote access app for the iPad and iPhone. It lets you connect to your Macs at home or at an office from the iPad.

Here’s a bit of its App Store intro:

Air Login connects over the Internet to present your Mac OS X screen on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. A virtual trackpad lets you move a mouse cursor around on the screen and interact with the Mac user interface.

• Air Login keeps the Mac menu bar pinned at the top of your iOS screen, even while you zoom and pan the rest of the screen to focus on small UI elements. The menu works instantly because it’s cached locally, and doesn’t need to communicate back to the computer until you select a menu item.
• A Mission Control-like feature called App Grid lets you quickly focus on a particular Mac window or app.
• A custom keyboard gives you all of the special Mac keys that you need.
• Avatron’s advanced Air Connect server connects your devices even if they’re behind firewalls, on a cell connection, or on a very restrictive network. If your Mac can surf the Web, Air Login can operate it remotely.

I installed the app this morning after seeing it get some heavy praise at TUAW, and I am already hugely impressed with it.

It’s easy and quick to get going with Air Login. There’s a helpful little on-screen walk-through of how to get started – you’ll tap through that and be ready to use the app within just a few minutes. You start by downloading a free companion app for the Mac (a Windows version is being worked on and is due for release soon). It’s called Air Connect and you download it from avatron.com/ac. Next you install the app, create a free account with Air Connect and login to the app on your Mac.

Once you’ve gone through those easy steps you’re ready to connect remotely to your Mac or Macs. Out of the box the app supports these connections via a local WiFi network. You can enable access from anywhere and via a cellular connection with an In-App purchase at $4.99 for 90 days or $14.99 for a year.

Connections have worked perfectly for me both inside my local WiFi network and when testing from elsewhere using a cellular connection – and I saw little to no lag on an LTE connection on my iPad mini.

All the app’s controls are available in a sleek bar along the bottom of the screen, which can easily be toggled visible and hidden. From this bar you can return home and logout of a connection, toggle the on-screen keyboard on and off, choose your preferred method of control (Trackpad, direct, or centered), toggle the size of the remote computer on the screen, and jump to the App Grid to switch between apps on the remote computer.

            

Getting around on the remote Mac and working with apps is easier with Air Login than with any other remote access app I’ve seen. The pinned Mac Menu bar works just as well as advertised too, and is a great little feature.

Even some of the smaller features of the app are very nicely done. One quick example is the way the app shows a Mac screen with a desktop wallpaper view when it’s available to connect to, as shown in the screencap at the top of this post, and a dark screen when it’s not available, like so:

 

Another much-appreciated feature is that Air Connect sends you an email to let you know when a new device has logged into one of your Macs – a nice security little bit of extra security.

The app requires OS X 10.7 or later.

I’ve used a number of very good remote access apps for iPad, but Air Login stands out for its ease of use and its beautiful and effective user interface. It’s a real joy to use and I’m happy to have paid the $15 for a year’s ‘Air Login Anywhere’ service.

Here’s an App Store link for Air Login; it’s a free app with In-App purchase options as mentioned above.