Apple Remote

The Apple Remote is a remote control introduced in October 2005 by Apple Inc. for use with a number of its products with infrared capability. It was originally designed to control the Front Row media center program on the iMac G5 and is compatible with many subsequent Macintosh computers. The first three generations of Apple TV used the Apple Remote as their primary control mechanism. It has now been replaced with the Siri Remote in the fourth generation. Prior to the Apple Remote, Apple produced several nameless IR remotes for products such as the Macintosh TV, TV tuner expansion boards, and the PowerCD drive.

Design

Plastic (2005)

The original Apple Remote was designed with six buttons and made of white plastic. Its shape and layout resembled the first-generation iPod Shuffle. A circular Play/Pause/Select button sat in the center of a larger four-button circle (clockwise): Volume Up, Next/Fast-forward, Volume Down, and Previous/Rewind. A separate Menu button was positioned below. Size - 83*32*8 mm. The price was set at US$29.00.

Aluminum (2009)

In October 2009, the remote was redesigned as a thinner and longer aluminum version. The new remote was released along with the 27- inch aluminum iMacs and multi-touch Magic Mouse. The Play/Pause button was moved out of the center of the directional buttons and put beside the Menu button (under the directional buttons). The symbols for the Volume Up/Down and Next/Fast-forward buttons were replaced with small dots, to make it clear that the buttons were also used to move up, down, left, and right within menus. Along with the new design, the price was dropped to US$19.99. In earlier aluminum remotes, the navigation ring was flush with the curvature of the remote's aluminum body. In the later revision, the ring is slightly raised to make it easier to locate the ring by touch. Replacement of the CR2032 battery in the original remote is done with a small pointed object such as a paper clip at the bottom right edge of the device, where the battery slides out on a tray. The newer version has the battery located behind a compartment in the middle of the device which is accessed by turning a coin in the compartment door's indent.

Compatibility

Earlier models of the iMac with polycarbonate enclosures featured a magnetic rest for the remote, which was later removed.

Infrared interference

Because many electrical appliances use infrared remote (IR) controls, concurrent use of the Apple Remote with other IR remotes may scramble communications and generate interference, preventing stable use. Remotes should be used individually to circumvent the problem.

Technical details

The Apple Remote uses a modified NEC IR protocol which consists of a differential PPM encoding on a 1:3 duty cycle 38 kHz 950 nm infrared carrier. There are 32 bits of encoded data between the AGC leader and the stop bit: The first two bytes sent are the Apple custom code ID (0xEE followed by 0x87), which are followed by a one byte command and a one byte remote ID (0-255) making a total of 32 bits of data. All bytes are sent least significant bit first. The least significant bit of the command byte is a parity bit over the command byte and the ID byte. The commands consist of: The aluminium Apple remote control has 7 buttons; the extra button is a play/pause button and sends the same code as the center button. However, both these buttons prepend their code with another 32 bit sequence containing the commands 0x2f and 0x2e, respectively.

References

External links

About the Apple Remote control

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1371503297 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.

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