Home 
Contact me The heir of the Nabaztag is arriving in the United States ! The robot rabbit is available on the Karotz Ztore for $130, or only $80 if you already own a Nabaztag.
MacTheRipper on Lion
In the tools remaining on PowerPC and therefore incompatible with Lion, there is the very good MacTheRipper. Mac The Ripper can rip a DVD fast on the hard drive, keeping its structure, without compressing it, thus keeping menus, bonus, etc.. A little problem is that the most common version, the 2.66, is only on PowerPC. Fortunately, there is a solution: a « 3.0 R14 » development version exists, that is compatible with Intel (and Lion). I invite you to dowload it here.
If the link is obsolete (it happens sometimes), the file is also available on MegaUpload.
Virtualizing Snow Leopard or Leopard on Lion, with VMWare Fusion 4.x
Today, I will show you a trick that will help you to virtualize easily Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or 10.6 (Snow Leopard) with VMWare Fusion 4.11 (the latest). The MacOS X license does not allow to virtualize the customer versions of the system, even if sometimes the developers ignore it, as with version 4.1 of VMWare Fusion … But as it is perfectly legal to virtualize Mac OS X versions in its dedicated server, it is possible to override the limitation.
So this tip is clearly in opposition to the Mac OS X license : it consists in modifying a classic version of Mac OS X to make the virtualization software believe it is a server version.
Connecting a CRT TV to a Mac : the compatibility
Sometimes you need to connect a Mac to an outdated equipment, such as a CRT TV, a projector, or a pico projector. And these seldom manage digital interfaces: analogical interfaces are required.
Apple proposes adapters for this specific case, but the compatibility is quite low.
Apple removes the Smart Card support in OS X Lion
In OS X Lion, Apple has removed an interesting feature: the Smart Card support. With Mac OS X (since Tiger), it was possible to authenticate (for example) with a Smart Card, as the U.S. military CAC card or with a Belgian electronic ID card (in particular). But with OS X Lion, the support is deprecated so no longer supported. And suddenly, the necessary files are no longer available.
I intended to propose a test on this feature in a few weeks, but without the support, it will be a bit complicated. Hopefully Apple will propose a new solution in the future for the management of smart cards, even if it is not likely to happen.
iPhoto : special album for the iPhone 4 and the 4S
A little trick to recover your photos on the iPhone 4 and to sort them depending on the camera used in iPhoto, with the Smart Albums. It’s pretty simple: ask iPhoto to recover pictures from an iPhone 4 (normally, it will propose it to you if there is at least one photo taken with the iPhone 4) and then sort them by aperture : above 2.6, it is the pictures taken with the back camera, below 2.6, they are taken with the front camera.
On the iPhone 4S, it is possible to choose the camera (iPhone 4S) but not to differentiate the photos: the aperture is the same on the front and rear cameras.
The Apple Djinn, an unknown product
There was a time … A time when the Internet did not exist. A time when modems could not even reach 2400 bauds …The time of the Apple Djinn. This external modem, proposed in partnership with France Telecom (a French operator), worked at 2400 bits per second and provided access to the Minitel, a French telecommunication system that prefigured the Internet.
It was also possible to receive and send faxes, storing them on the computer, and even to transform the Mac into an answering machine. A system allowed the user to link the address book from Mac OS to the device.
Apple Djinn Pro
Une version française ici.
Read more
[Prototype] The PowerBop
In the ’90s, France Telecom (the main operator in France) proposed a mobile telephony offer based on the Bi-Bop technology. Technically, it was essentially a kind of portable phone box : the phone was to be used close to a terminal (about 300 m) and the cell change was not supported.
Make your Mac identify any card reader as an Apple one
Today, a little « cosmetic » hack. When you click on « About this Mac » in the information systems, you can see a line named « card reader »… Except that the only card reader that will appear there is the one integrated in your computer, if any. On my MacBook Pro, there is not any, but I have an ExpressCard card reader (a Sony) that does its job well.
The idea is to ensure that the card reader is recognized as an Apple model.
Turning a Wi-Fi card into « AirPort Extreme » card
In the previous article, I explained how to install a card purchased on eBay to retrieve an Airdrop compatibility on MacBook. The problem is that the card is not recognized as an Apple card. But it is actually possible to « transform » a Broadcom Wi-Fi card in AirPort Extreme, thanks to Linux. It is a bit complicated to achieve if you do not really know Linux ; but if command lines are not an issue to you, it is pretty feasible. I will now show you how to flash a Broadcom card (a BCM4322 is used here to hack Airdrop).
