Hacks Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Siri protocol cracked to run on any device, still requires iPhone 4S UDID

by Chris Rawson (Nov 14th, 2011)

The Next Web reports that app developer Applidium, who you may remember from the VLC iOS app fracas earlier this year, has cracked the security protocols associated with Siri. Using Applidium's methods allows Siri to recognize voice commands from any device -- not just another iPhone, but also an ...

Panorama mode for camera found buried within iOS 5 code

by Chris Rawson (Nov 8th, 2011)

Numerous third-party camera apps already exist on the App Store which allow users to stitch together multiple photos into a panoramic image. 360 Panorama is the best example I can think of, and it does a really good job of creating panoramas from multiple images. It seems Apple considered ...

Siri hacked to work on jailbroken iPhone 4 and iPod touch

by Erica Sadun (Oct 29th, 2011)

iPhone experts Steven Troughton-Smith and chpwn seem to have just gotten the iPhone 4S-only Siri working on jailbroken iPhone 4 and current-gen iPod touch units this evening. This bypasses earlier authentication issues. They tweeted their success and posted a screen shot showing Siri working ...

How to refresh OS X Lion's Launchpad contents

by Erica Sadun (Jul 21st, 2011)

The young guys over at HaiTeq have been running into issues with Launchpad updating after installing software that wasn't bought on the Mac App Store. Because of this, they've figured out a workaround to force Launchpad to refresh its data base. Removing the database files from the user's Dock ...

AirPlay for Windows Media Center beta now available

by Dave Caolo (May 24th, 2011)

Thomas Pleasance has released a beta of AirPlay for Windows Media Center, which does just what you think: it streams video and photos to a Windows Media Center PC via Apple's AirPlay. To get started, install Apple's Bonjour for Windows and Pleasance's client on your Media Center PC. From there, ...

Apple AirPlay private key exposed, released

by Dave Caolo (Apr 11th, 2011)

Enterprising software developer James Laird was looking to stream music without AirPlay. Since an appropriate AirPort Express emulator did not exist, Laird reverse-engineered the Airport Express private key and published an open source AirPort Express emulator called ShairPort as a result. What ...

iPad 2 mirroring: Capturing video in higher definition

by Erica Sadun (Apr 1st, 2011)

Co-blogger Steve Sande and I have been collaborating on our attempts to find a solid solution that allows iPad 2 owners to use the screen mirroring feature in tandem with a computer video capture tool; this would simplify screencasting, training, recording and scores of other things. Steve was ...

Video extender powers iPad 2 wireless HDMI hack: The streaming adds 2 pounds

by Erica Sadun (Mar 29th, 2011)

If you don't mind spending a bit of money and adding a couple of pounds of weight (and a two hour time limit) to your iPad, this video demonstrates that a simple HDMI wireless extender will allow you to transmit audio and video to a remote presentation system. After watching the clip, we ...

iPhone passcode bypassed by security researchers

by Mike Schramm (Feb 10th, 2011)

A group of German researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology report that they've cracked the iPhone's keychain system, allowing access to the passwords saved on any phone in just six minutes. By jailbreaking the target phone and installing an SSH app on it, the hackers ...

Bruce: Moving Mac computing to Apple TV output

by Erica Sadun (Jan 18th, 2011)

What's Bruce? Aside from being a punchline to a rather silly Monty Python video, it's also an amusing little testbed that I've been putting together to see how far I can push the Apple TV's utility, whether for creating information kiosk installations or bringing rich information out from the office ...

Video: iPhone 3G running Android 2.3

by Chris Rawson (Jan 8th, 2011)

The iPhone 3G now does something not even all Android phones can claim: it runs Android's current version, 2.3 "Gingerbread." iDroid developer Nick Pack posted a video of a jailbroken iPhone 3G successfully running Android 2.3. Naturally the older iPhone was huffing and puffing a bit as it tried to ...

Install Mac OS X on a Cr-48 Chrome notebook

by Dave Caolo (Jan 3rd, 2011)

In the hackintosh tradition, we present this method of installing Mac OS X onto a Chrome Cr-48 notebook using Hexxeh's Luigi firmware toolkit. You'll void your machine's warranty in the process, as you've got to remove the bottom cover to activate developer mode. Once that's done, you can flash ...

Hands on: iPad printing with 4.2 and AirPrint, a limited menu

by Michael Rose (Nov 23rd, 2010)

If AirPlay's first-generation limitations have disappointed a lot of would-be iPhone video mavens who had dreamed of quickly sharing their clips to the big screen, you can just imagine how irate everyone is about AirPrint. The universal shared printer solution for iPhone and iPad was kneecapped in ...

iPad may soon run Android via OpeniBoot

by David Quilty (Nov 12th, 2010)

Not entirely psyched about your iPad because of its lack of Adobe Flash support, or unhappy with the iOS operating system itself? How about installing Android on it instead? OpeniBoot, an open source implementation of iBoot for Apple iOS devices, is on a mission to bring the Android OS to the iPad ...

AirPrint: how to make it work for shared printers

by Chris Rawson (Nov 11th, 2010)

Update: The clever fellows over at Netputing bundled the files together with a snazzy install/uninstall button to produce AirPrint Hactivator, which takes care of all the under the hood business for you. The same caveats apply: remember that you are installing obsolete/beta system files, use at your ...