Being “the IT guy” I end up helping out a lot of family with computer issues. This would be all good and dandy, except that all of my family, and most of my wife’s family are out of state. Over the years I’ve found some great tools for helping to do remote support on a budget, so I thought I’d share my experience.
Desktop Support
I’ve been using TeamViewer for several years now across multiple platforms and it always works flawlessly. It’s very simple to setup, just requiring a quick install, and an exchange of a code and password from the remote user. Once connected you can store those values for later use.
iOS Support
The second support method was something that I cam up with today. I needed to assist my mom with her iPhone, but when doing this I can’t see what is happening on her iPhone. I realized today that there was a way that I could get around that. In the past I had used software called Reflector in order to mirror my iPhones interface to my desktop for recording. I had the thought today, that if I was already doing a team viewer session with mom, and she connected her iPhone/iPad to the Mac using Reflector then I would be able to see what was happening on her iOS devices. This made working with the iOS devices much, much easier. You can download a trial of Reflector from Air Squirrels: Reflector.
Using Reflector is is also very easy, just start the app, and then on the iOS device swipe from below the screen up to open the command center settings. Then tap on “AirPlay” and select the computer from the list, then turn on mirroring with the toggle switch.
References:
TeamViewer - http://www.teamviewer.com/
Reflector - http://www.airsquirrels.com/reflector/