Even though I harbour an intense hatred for the word “lite”, I decided to give Mocha (VNC client for the iPhone) a shot. There’s a full version that additionally allows right clicking and (I think) Ctrl-Alt-Del, but I don’t much care about right-click for all I’ll use it, and the three-fingered Windows salute doesn’t do a goddamned thing on either my laptop or my desktop, so it’s not worth six bucks or whatever it is. All I wanted, really, was to see whether I could do it.

First, of course, I had to connect to both the laptop and the iPhone from the desktop. Why? ‘Cause I can!  😀 FF on left, iPhone email in middle, and laptop with Nautilus on right.

Then, I had to try the same thing on the laptop. The laptop’s screen is smaller, so I don’t have anything open on it, just Rhythmbox running on the desktop, and the iPhone (making a call to our landline…because I can!)

Both of those were done using Veency (free from Cydia) on the iPhone, and either Vino or Vinaigre (I forget which is the server and which is the client) on the computers. I use that because it comes with Ubuntu (and it works fine).

I initially had some trouble getting Mocha to connect to the desktop, but that was my own fault. I forgot that the last time I used it, I set a password because I had some stuff I wanted to do on the desktop, but P. wanted to sleep and my “clicky” Keytronic keyboard (which I will never give up) bothers him when he’s trying to sleep, so I took the laptop out to the living room and set a password on the desktop so I wouldn’t have to authorise every time I wanted to open a connection. Mocha was doing its best, but I was entering the wrong password. Oops. Once I entered the correct password, I had no trouble at all.

VNC isn’t exactly lightning fast (for anything), but even with 32-bit colour, it’s okay for the laptop at 1280×800 resolution on wifi. I’ve confined VNC to local connections for now because that’s all I ever use and there’s no point in allowing outside connections unless I intend to use them, but I probably will over the weekend, just to see whether this will work over something as slow as Edge. I know I won’t be able to keep the 32 bit colour, and it’s gonna be slooooow because there’s no 3G here, but…meh, it’ll still be fun to do, and Dave probably understands enough to be impressed. He won’t know VNC, but if I tell him I’m controlling my home computer with my phone, he’ll get it. Dan might, too, if he happens to turn up (at least he’ll pretend he knows WTF I’m talking about…hehe). Laptop being controlled from the iPhone, with Nautilus and Audacious playing “Shambala” (Three Dog Night). The blue buttons on Mocha are kinda ugly, but the paid version is the same, and this is free, so hell on the buttons–I just won’t look at them except to use them. The iPhone’s screen is rather small, of course, but Mocha does flip to landscape, and using a combination of pinch-to-zoom and dragging the screen around with my finger, it’s quite do-able.

Desktop controlled by the iPhone, playing Lady GaGa on Rhythmbox. I left it in portrait mode, but it would flip if I turned the phone. I initially had this set for 8 bit colour, but then decided to try 32 bit. It works, and on wifi it’s not unbearably slow, but it did run the iPhone low on memory. I’m thinking that has something to do with 2720×1024 resolution and 32-bit colour. When I first had it on 8 bit, it looked ugly, but functioned just fine.

Anyway, it was fun to see whether this would all work, and although I can’t imagine I’ll ever exactly need it, it’s still interesting, and cool to have. I told P. this morning about controlling the phone with the computers, but I didn’t tell him I can control the computers with the phone, so my plan is to wait until we’re in the kitchen, then start Rhythmbox with the phone (from the kitchen, my desktop is in the bedroom), pass it to him and ask him to skip forward a song or two. He’ll probably just look at me like I’ve got fifteen heads, since he’s not familiar with using the iPhone, let alone using it to control a computer running an OS he doesn’t know at all, but it’ll still be fun to see what he says. Why? Because…I…can! 😛