In the course of the last ~9 months I have been writing about this little HTPC I built, how I set up XBMC on a Ubuntu server install, using my iPhone as a remote control for it. Until I bought an iPad last year on one of my trips to California. How cool would it be to have a XBMC remote app for the iPad? Back then, there were only a few apps for remote controlling XBMC through your iPad, they were expensive and I didn’t like their interfaces. That’s when I knew it was time for me to learn a new platform, a new language some new tools and a couple of new frameworks.

So yes, it’s been a bit quiet around here, since I have been spending a fair bit of my spare time on this little project… It was, and still is, a lot of fun learning and spending my time in a new environment. I already loved the Mac OS and iOS experience as end-user, but Apple has really done a magnificent job on the software development side as well. While I have been coding away on my own application, several new XBMC remote control applications emerged on the App Store. Some better than others, some even pretty good ones. However, I was having too much fun working on my own thing to stop me from finishing and adding another one to the list.

So here I am, proud to announce that as of today my first iPad App is available for download in Apple’s App Store! Last week I submitted version 1.0.0 of XBMC Remote Control for iPad for review, and after a week of refreshing my mailbox way too often, it got accepted. I’ve added a dedicated page for it on Code-muse.com, which currently contains basically the same information as in the App Store, however I’m planning to add more about configuring and using it there.

I’ve not stopped working on it, in contrary, I’ve still got a whole lot of features and ideas that I’d like to add in the coming weeks, months. First off, I want to be able to start me some music using my iPad and after that, besides music, it would be very nice to be able to also browse video items from your XBMC library.

I’m off testing my App by firing up another episode of The Wire. In the meantime, for everyone who’s willing to give it a try too, I’m open for bug reports, ideas, suggestions, and all other comments.