Hacks Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Timed command-line screenshots

by Erica Sadun (May 20th, 2013)

A TUAW staffer recently asked if there were a way to snapshot the exact same region of the screen over and over at timed intervals without buying third-party software. There is, but it depends on your comfort with the command line. If you're experienced in Unix scripting, read on. If not, you may ...

Six cool upgrades for an old iPod

by Kelly Hodgkins (Mar 15th, 2013)

If you have an old iPod kicking around, TechHive has some ideas that'll help you breathe some new life into these vintage devices. Each upgrade mentioned in the post are warranty-voiders, but that doesn't matter anymore because the devices are so old. The lists of mods include changing the ...

Use Siri and a Raspberry Pi to open your garage door with your voice

by Mike Wehner (Dec 17th, 2012)

Siri can already be used to complete some pretty nifty tasks, including fetching sports scores or directions across town, but having the virtual assistant manipulate things in your physical space is something entirely different. As Hack A Day reports, by combining some special Siri software ...

My cheap, simple livestreaming rig: iPhone, Ustream, Zagg and Clingo

by Michael Rose (Sep 26th, 2012)

The challenge: On short notice, I was asked to stream holiday services from my wife's synagogue so that homebound congregants and college students could attend at a distance. "Sure," I said, before I really thought it through. My preferred setup for a reliable video stream would include a ...

Verizon iPad running with AT&T SIM installed

by Erica Sadun (Mar 16th, 2012)

Over at the MacRumors forums, reader jsnuff1 has confirmed that the new Verizon iPad works with AT&T's 3G network. The Verizon iPad has a built-in GSM SIM slot and supports connections on the same 850/900/1800/1900 MHz bands as the AT&T unit. What jsnuff1 did was to slot in an iPhone ...

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 ...