As a very longtime Mac user who started into computers back in the pre-DOS, pre-Mac days of CP/M and the command line interface, I’ll be one of the first to say, ‘We’ve come a long way, baby!’ Today, an iPhone is more powerful than Macs of just a few years ago. And the Mac itself rivals supercomputer power from a decade ago. But as much as things have changed they’ve also remained the same.
How so? The keyboard.
As advanced as Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana might appear to be, most of us enter information into our devices the old fashioned way. By hand. Into a keyboard. Even iPhone and iPad require an onscreen keyboard which is much slower than traditional corded or wireless keyboards for the Macs of the 21st century. Apple TV is even worse.
Enter Typeeto, a unique and affordable Mac utility which lets you use the Mac’s keyboard as a Bluetooth keyboard for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and even Android devices. That means you can use a full sized keyboard to type in text and it gets displayed on the mobile device screen as you type, a far easier, faster, and more accurate way to enter text.
The way Typeeto works is pure Mac-like in nature. First, install Typeeto. Second, pair the Bluetooth device you want; iPhone, iPad, Android device, etc. The cool thing here is that you can connect multiple devices to Typeeto on your Mac and switch easily between each one. Finally, select the device and begin typing.
Here’s how the setup goes.
Click the Next button and you’ll see how Typeeto works in the Mac’s Menubar with the list of selected and connected devices.
Not every Bluetooth device connects exactly the same way, including iPhone and iPad, and Android devices, so walk through the process as the instructions dictate.
When you’re done pairing the devices all you’ll need to do is grab the selected device from the Mac’s Menubar, tap the field on iPhone or iPad (or, whatever device), and then begin typing from your Mac’s keyboard.
After that, it just works. The Mac’s wireless Bluetooth keyboard becomes the keyboard connected to your iPhone or iPad. Typeeto worked flawlessly on my Apple TV 3G, but I haven’t tried it on the 4th generation Apple TV model.