Teleport – Remote Control for your Mac.

Teleport, which is still in beta and from abyss software, is a genius little app. It’s aimed at mac users who have more than one machine and want to use one without switching to the other machines keyboard or mouse, i.e. those with a desktop and laptop side by side at work.

You specify one side of the screen on the machine which a keyboard and mouse or trackpad is connected, and when you move your mouse across that boundary, it ‘teleports’ the cursor control across to the other mac, and makes keyboard functionality transfer too.

It’s easy to set up – a simple download and install gives you a new preference pane in System Preferences. You then activate teleport, and start configuring.

Teleport’s preference pane

It’s all really quite straightforward – the most complex it gets really is opening relevant ports in your firewall if you have that turned on. Once setup, a menu item appears to easily launch or deactivate teleport as needed.

Teleport in the menu bar

So teleport is awesome for those who have laptops and deskop machines, and use them side by side. It essentially gives you another workspace or monitor area.

However… it also works supremely well as a remote control for a keyboardless and/or mouseless mac. The mac mini in our lounge is hooked up to the TV, like many mac heads have now. I don’t want the hassle of keeping a keyboard hooked up to the mac permanently, and don’t want or need to shell out for a wireless keyboard just for use every now and again on this mac. So, for any Media Mac Mini admin tasks, like importing cd’s in iTunes or adding schedules to EyeTV for recording, using teleport from our 5 year old iBook (!) adds a keyboard and mouse (well, trackpad) to that machine instantly and wirelessly. And we all know we like wireless!

So, download and give teleport a try if you are the user of more than one mac in the same vicinity. You can’t really go wrong.