cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/12741016
this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2026
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I always wanted a phone with an IR blaster, especially after smartphones became a thing, so I could just use my phone as a universal remote for my TV and stereo.
I used to wrote mobile apps for a large cable company whose named rhymes with "bombast". At one point I got the gig writing their TV guide-type app for Blackberry. Nobody else at the entire company had any idea of how to do it since none of the built-in controls for Blackberry development (called "fields") could do anything like what was needed. I had a lot of experience with animation so I was able to do everything with custom-drawn graphics. I had a great time since I had zero interference from managers and I made the app do everything I always wanted a guide app to do. It could even change the channel for you on your own TV, not using IR (which Blackberrys did have) but sending the control signals through wifi to the Bombast servers. At one point, executives from RIM visited the office trying to convince large clients to continue developing apps for their platform; we showed them my app and they were blown away, saying "how is this even possible on a Blackberry?"
The punchline, of course, is that this was 2011 and Blackberry was plummeting rapidly to its doom. My guide was on the market for just a few months but nobody ever really downloaded Bombast apps (even for iPhone or Android -- their numbers were essentially faked for a bunch of reasons) so it died. I did continue using it myself for my own TV until Bombast sunsetted the API it used. That was a sad day for me.
It is insane to me that today, in 2026, the channel guide on my parents' cable box is so much fucking worse -- and slower -- of an experience than an app I wrote 15 years ago for mobile devices that were almost 10 years old themselves at that time.
I had one, as with everything that is a touch screen, not being able to use it accurately without staring at it makes the reality of using it a lot worse than the idea. Not saying it isn't a decent backup but I would never want it as my main remote.
I had one in the late 2010, besides pranks I didn't use it much, not very convenient, it's much faster to just grab the remote, than grab the phone, unlock it, find the app, launch it and find the button on the screen.
I would have used it to change the channel in waiting rooms where they locked out or disabled the controls on the TV and have it stuck on FOX.
Yeah, pranks. In this case, gutenpranken.