In Mac OS X, the closest thing we have is the “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver” check box in the Security system preference pane (in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard). Then what a lot of people do is set a screen corner to activate the screen saver (via the Exposé system preference pane). Then just before they walk away, they move the mouse into the designated corner, wait for the screensaver to kick in, then walk away.

If you have OS X’s Fast User Switching enabled (via the Accounts system preference pane), there’s a second way to lock your screen which is a bit more like the Windows method. By selecting the “Login Window…” option from the Fast User Switching (FUS) menu in the top-right corner of your screen, you are taken back to the login screen while your user session continues to run in the background.

While the Mac OS X solutions works fine, some of us regular Windows users just prefer a more direct method of locking the screen similar to what is offered in Windows. I was one of those people. I liked the Fast User Switching method for locking my screen, but didn’t want to have to enable FUS to get it because I’m the only person who uses my Mac, and I didn’t want to give up the extra menu bar real estate to the FUS menu. In addition, the FUS method requires two clicks, which is one too many clicks! Ideally I wanted a single click solution or one which can be quickly activated with a hotkey.

In my searching, I found a Terminal command on MacOSXHints (it’s been posted so many times in different hints and comments too numerous to give credit to individually) which activates the “Login Window…” function from the FUS menu, even if FUS isn’t enabled! The command is as follows:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend

“Now we’re getting somewhere”, I thought to myself upon finding that little gem. If I could turn that into a double-clickable script or application, I could add it to the Dock and could lock my system with a single click of the mouse. Even better, using keyboard automation software like Spark or similar, you could even map a keyboard shortcut that would launch the script or app with the press of a couple of keys.

So to cut an already long story short, I figured out how to create a shell script and using XCode bundled it as an application. I won’t go into details on exactly how I did either, mainly because I did it a long time ago, and frankly can’t exactly remember, and that wasn’t the point of this post. Not being an artist, I borrowed Apple’s icon from Mac OS X’s Security Preference pane (thanks Apple!) and made it the icon for my new application bundle which I called simply “Lock System”. You can download the Lock System application from the link at the end of this article.

Once you’ve downloaded and extracted the zip file. Just move the Lock System application to your Applications folder (or anywhere else you want to keep it). I keep mine in ~/Library/Scripts so I can access it via the AppleScript menu. Then add it to your Dock or put an Alias on your Desktop for quick access. Finally, create a keyboard shortcut in Spark (or similar) for launching Lock System (I like Command+Shift+L), and that’s it! You can now lock your Mac like you do on Windows. Enjoy!

Lock System should be compatible with Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4 and 10.5. Anyone out there who can confirm if it still works in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, please post your results in the comments, thanks! [Edit: See my update at the end of the article. - madgunde] This software is presented as is and with no guarantees. You use it at your own risk, so don’t be coming back to me to complain that it’s hosed your system (which would be hard to believe anyway). I’ve been using it for years now and am only sharing because I thought others might appreciate it.

Download Lock System (12KB .zip)

The Apple remote only handles so much unfortunately as we know all too well. Switching from Front Row to DVD Player or any other app can’t be done for instance. The little white device becomes nothing more than a poor paperweight in fact when trying to control any app that isn’t specifically a media or presentation tool. We normally get around this limitation by keeping a wireless keyboard and mouse handy, tucked away and out of sight until needed. Well I’m happy to report that our days of getting off the couch to reach for a keyboard or mouse are finally over because a handy little iPhone/iPod touch app has just rendered those battery sucking peripherals obsolete!

ControlPad's user interface is simple and functional.

ControlPad by Tienshiao Ma (link to developer’s blog) is a simple yet beautifully executed app that turns your multi-touch Apple iDevice into a wireless keyboard and mouse. As you can see from the image on the left, the interface divides the screen into a two button touch pad on top and a keyboard on the bottom. Communication is done using standard VNC protocols, so no installation is required on Macs running Mac OS X. However, because it’s VNC, it can be used to remote control any PC and OS that has a VNC server installed. The developers website even has step by step instructions for configuring your setup whether it be running Mac OS X, Windows or Ubuntu Linux.

Since I’ve already got my Macs set up to control via VNC and Screen Sharing, it took zero configuration on the computer end to start using ControlPad. It even automatically detected my Macs using Bonjour, so all I had to do was select my Mac from the list, enter my VNC password and within seconds I was controlling my Mac’s mouse and keyboard using my iPhone. It’s that simple. You can of course manually enter and save your PC or Mac’s network info and password to recall later with just one touch. If it wasn’t obvious, your Mac will need to be accessible over a WiFi network or via the internet and your iPhone or iPod touch will have to have network connectivity to be able to communicate with the computer. It even works on iPhones connected via a 3G or EDGE cell network over the internet.

The virtual touch pad is very responsive and allows you to do all the standard mouse click, double-click and drag operations. It even supports tap to click and two finger drag to scroll like the trackpads on Apple’s notebooks, which is a godsend if you’re surfing the web. To round out the features, the virtual keyboard seems to support all they keys you’d find on a full-size keyboard, and even supports modifier keys for key combos like Command+Option+Esc or Command+Tab. So there’s almost nothing you can’t do with this that you could with a real wireless or wired keyboard.

It’s hard not to love ControlPad for iPhone/iPod touch. The app isn’t perfect, but there’s not much to gripe about either. In my testing it has been fast, stable and responsive. I don’t really have any complaints, but I do have a couple of suggestions for improvements I’d like to see in a future update:

• It only supports TCP/IP port numbers up to 32767, even though port numbers upwards of 50000 should be perfectly valid. Update: Since the original review was posted, ControlPad has gained support for the full range of TCP/IP port numbers.
• As a Mac user, I’d like to see a per connection preference to have the ‘alt’ key aptly renamed ‘option’ when controlling a Mac. Update: The latest versions of ControlPad now seem to detect Mac hosts and displays a properly named ‘option’ key instead of ‘alt’.
• It would be nice if we could get a landscape keyboard when turning the device on it’s side. Since there wouldn’t be any room for the trackpad in landscape mode, it would be nice to be able to hide the keyboard to use a larger full-screen trackpad. Tilting the iPhone back to portrait mode could then return it to the default split-screen layout. Update: The developer did one better in a later release of ControlPad. Not only does turning the iPhone into landscape mode give you a landscape keyboard (thank-you!), but you can hide the keyboard and get a spacious full screen trackpad, great for doing extended complex mouse operations.
• This is a bit of a long shot, but one thing that I miss while using ControlPad to type on my Mac is the iPhone’s predictive spell checker. Maybe in a future update they could add a little text entry buffer so you could type your text with spelling correction on the iPhone, make any corrections and then send it all to the computer as keystrokes. That way we could benefit from the iPhone’s excellent typo correction system. Something you only realize you rely on when it’s suddenly not there to fix your clumsy thumbs’ mistakes.

ControlPad is available from the iTunes App Store for $2.99 CDN. In my opinion it is a must have app for any iPhone or iPod touch user who needs to control a Mac or PC that doesn’t have a keyboard or mouse within reach or if you want to do away with a mouse or keyboard altogether such as in a kiosk, presentation or home theatre setup. It works as advertised.

Rating: 4.5/5 Upgraded to 5/5 because of improvements added in the latest releases.
Product: ControlPad for iPhone and iPod touch
Version: 1.1.2 (iPhone OS 3.0 tested)
Price: $2.99 CDN
Developer: Tienshiao Ma
Website: http://www.tienshiao.org/iphone-apps/controlpad/
iTunes Link: Download ControlPad