Mods Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Mac 101: Upgrade to SSD

by Shawn "Doc" Boyd (May 14th, 2013)

If you are looking for a way to get more out of your MacBook or MacBook Pro, consider a solid-state drive (SSD). SSDs offer faster data read and write speeds, fast file transfers, speedier boot times and will save you some battery life. In the ...

Shawn Blanc offers a tasty recipe for cooking up a Mac media and file server

by Steven Sande (Feb 6th, 2013)

Sometimes you may have a Mac that works well enough to escape being recycled at Gazelle, but has just enough wrong with it that it can't be used in day-to-day work. That was the situation with blogger and podcaster Shawn Blanc's wife's MacBook ...

20" iMac G4 updated to Ivy Bridge

by Steven Sande (Jan 18th, 2013)

Apple's iMac went through several design permutations before the company settled on the current "all-in-one computer and display on aluminum arm" configuration. One of the most iconic designs was that of the iMac G4, which held the electronics ...

Using a Raspberry Pi to make an AirPlay speaker

by Steven Sande (Dec 28th, 2012)

If you're one of those people who loves to tinker with stuff and try to create functional equipment in unconventional ways, then you'll appreciate what blogger Jordan Burgess did -- he made an AirPlay speaker receiver out of a Raspberry ...

Awesome iPhone mod illuminates Apple logo

by Steven Sande (Oct 18th, 2012)

OK, this is probably one of the greatest iPhone mods we've seen to date. Featured on Adafruit, this mod uses a "trademark-infringing" replacement back and some other parts to make the Apple logo on the back of an iPhone 4 glow. The modder, Becky ...

How to dye a MacBook

by Steven Sande (Feb 14th, 2012)

For Easter this year (which is on April 8), here's a wonderful idea for making your old white MacBook match up with your Easter eggs. "The Brain" at BrainDeadlockLabs decided to do a dye job on his MacBook to give it a bright orange finish that's ...

eMac converted to self-tweeting cat bed

by Dave Caolo (Dec 1st, 2011)

What do you do with an obsolete computer the size of a huge, plastic canned ham? Let your cat use it to tweet her naps, of course. The eMac was a behemoth of a computer, released by Apple in 2002. Originally meant for the education market, Apple ...

Control Siri with your mind and lots of hardware

by Steven Sande (Nov 11th, 2011)

What's better than controlling your iPhone 4S with Siri? How about just thinking about something and having it happen? That's what a group of hackers have accomplished with Project Black Mirror. They've connected an iPhone 4S up to a setup ...

Intensive surgery on an old MacBook Pro yields huge performance gains (Updated)

by Chris Rawson (Aug 19th, 2011)

Installing OS X Lion on a 3 1/2-year old MacBook Pro made it clearer than ever just how slow my old machine had become. Beachballs left and right, UI lag, incredibly long reboot times, dismal application load times... as someone accustomed to ...

A giant white iPhone table with no multitouch

by Dave Caolo (Aug 12th, 2011)

German enthusiast and iPhone fan Benjamin Bachmeier has constructed a table-sized computer called the iTableous. This behemoth was entirely hand-built and runs a hackintosh version of Mac OS X 10.6.7 as well as Windows 7 Professional. Dual boot, ...

Hack adds NFC payment to your iPhone

by Kelly Hodgkins (Jul 29th, 2011)

Apple is rumored to be adding NFC support to the iPhone at some point in the future, but here's a way you can add wireless payments to your iPhone right now. You don't have to solder an NFC chipset, install any applications or even apply a ...

eMac becomes cat bed

by Mike Schramm (Apr 16th, 2011)

This eMac-turned-cat bed is the product of a friend of mine here in LA named Colin Hughes. A little while back, he got a new computer to replace his old (though still working) eMac, and instead of junking it, he decided to clean out the hardware ...

Turn an iPod touch into an iPhone with its own packaging

by Dave Caolo (Feb 4th, 2011)

Here's a nice bit of ingenuity. Lifehacker reader Kevin explains how he used a VoIP app (Viber and Line 2 are two nice options) with his iPod's packaging and earbud speakers to create a DIY handset. After smoothing the edges of the plastic backing ...

Apple TV clock mod makes up for the lack of an iPad clock

by Steven Sande (Jan 21st, 2011)

Do you have an old first-generation Apple TV lying around collecting dust? Would you like to turn it into something useful and attractive? TUAW reader Antonio Worrall had purchased a second-generation Apple TV, and his old unit had gone to "join the ...

Fantastic transparent iPhone 4 case mod

by Dave Caolo (Jan 20th, 2011)

We love a good mod, and this one is stellar. An enterprising iPhone user got his hands on a clear case mod kit for the iPhone 4, (Google translation) put it together and posted the fantastic results online. It's wicked geeky, and reminds us of the ...

iPhone receives push notifications from real-world mailbox

by Steven Sande (Jan 20th, 2011)

Sure, push notification is nothing new for iPhone users. But when was the last time that you received notification that real-live mail -- the kind made of atoms, not bits -- has shown up in your mailbox? One of the new evil geniuses at Make Magazine ...