#Mac Controller This is a simple webapp for iOS that let's you control your Mac via AppleScript. Based on Brett Terpstra original Home Control idea but stripped down, some bug fixes and updated for 2012. It was designed to control multiple Macs on a network where the Macs were out of user reach, to preform simple tasks like volume control, restarting the mac, opening and closing applications.

##Setting up the web server

To use this, you will need to run a web server on your Mac and run it as your own user. Not the most secure but the Macs i'm running this on, are on a private network so it is not a huge concern for me.

Mac OS X comes with a built in apache web server making the installation fairly easy.

###Running the web server as a different user account

In order for the AppleScript commands to execute, you need to change which user account is running the web server. To do this you need to edit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf as root, in what ever text editor you like. I'm just using nano here as it's preinstalled on OS X.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/httpd.conf 

Find the following lines

User _www
Group _www

And change them to:

User yourusername
Group staff

So for example, mine looks like this:

User Ben
Group staff

If you haven't already, you need to enable PHP. Find the following line:

#LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

And remove the # at the beginning.

Now, on the command line, type sudo apachectl graceful to restart the server under the new user. For more information on setting up Apache on OS X 10.8, check out this guide.

##Installing Mac Controller

Download the files and place them in a folder called maccontroller in ~/Sites. By placing them in there, you can reach the app by going to http://computername.local/~username/maccontroller. For example, I can reach it from http://macbookpro.local/~Ben/maccontroller/. To change your computer name, go to System Preferences > Sharing and edit the text box called "Computer Name:".

Once you are happy that everything is working, hit the share button on the bottom bar of Mobile Safari to add the app to your home screen. This will run a full-screen version directly from your home screen.

##Customising

If you wish to customise it in anyway, go and check out Brett's original post on Home Control for more details.