TIL the Apple TV Remote pairs with MacBooks for presentations and playback

[frereubu]

This just seems to link to the front page of the macOS Tahoe user guide. I guess this information might be in there somewhere, but...

[no_creativity_]

Yeah, sorry about that. Not sure if that was HN being weird, or my mistake. Here's the real link though: https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/mac-help/mchlp2926/10....

[hk1337]

MacBooks have been using remotes since at least 2005. There was a cinema app on there you could use to watch movies and use the remote to control it. I think you could use it with Keynote when it first came out too.

[cosmic_cheese]

iMac G5s too! They even had a spot on their right side which was magnetic where the remote from that era could be stuck when not in use. My 20” iMac G5 doubled nicely as a TV in my high school years (and the 27” model with its dramatically nicer IPS panel even better in my college years).

[pram]

Yeah it was called Front Row, which brought up an Apple TV like interface in OSX. Pretty dumb they removed it IMO it was pretty good with iMacs.

[brownindian]

Ah good old days when I was in college and used to use my 2006 White Polycarbonate MacBook with the said remote as a glorified DVD player to play movies I'd rent from Blockbuster. Can't believe that was 20 years ago

[varenc]

I love this feature. There's this app, "Remote Buddy", that's lets you specify custom behavior for the various Apple Remote buttons. Since by default only a few of the buttons control anything.

[rjrjrjrj]

I knew this but had forgotten.

The first MacBook Pro included a remote in the box to control Front Row - a sort of proto-Apple TV app.

[al_borland]

Back in those days the laptops had an IR sensor. I thought the Apple Remote functionality died with the IR sensor.

[chaos0815]

The old Apple remotes also worked together with the iPod dock. Great feature.