Monthly Archive for December, 2004

Apple iSync and the Motorola C350 GSM mobile phone

Published
by
blogmywiki
on December 31, 2004
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

A while ago I needed a new mobile phone in a hurry, and I ended up buying a Motorola C350.

I wouldn’t recommend this phone (it’s horribly scuffed and scratched after only a few months’ use) but if you have already got one, this might be useful.

I bought it as it’s listed on Apple’s web site as being iSync-compatible. I hooked it up using a mini-to-normal USB cable I had lying around, but iSync refused to see the phone, even though I could see the phone in OS X’s network preferences. I was using MacOS 10.2, and I can’t recall which version of iSync.

A quick Google suggested that I might need to use Motorola’s own cable - luckily before I spent �20 plus on one, a work colleague suggested I look at the iSync preference file for my phone - you can do this from the Terminal and Emacs, or do as I did and log in as root and find it in BBEdit… and I discovered the Product ID in the plist file for the C350 (14338) didn’t match the Product ID listed for my phone in OS X’s System Profiler (22530). Once I’d changed this, bingo! iSync could see my phone and happily sync using the cheap USB cable I got with a keyring camera!

So perhaps the Motorola C350 phone has a new product ID or a different one in Europe or the UK?

Here’s one way of editing the preference file from the Terminal using Emacs:


% cd /System/Library/SyncServices/
   MotorolaConduit.bundle
% cd Contents/Resources
% sudo emacs USBDevice.plist

And this is an extract from the file - the number after ‘idProduct’ is the one I needed to change:


<key>C350_GSM</key>
<dict>
<key>idProduct</key>
<integer>22530</integer>
<key>idVendor</key>
<integer>8888</integer>
</dict>

Woking for Apple for free

Published
by
blogmywiki
on December 23, 2004
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Despite having a dead iMac under my roof, I’m still addicted to reading books about Apple Computer, Inc.

Here’s a great addition - the story behind Graphing Calculator, a bit of software bundled with all Macs since the PowerPC was introduced. I’ve no interest in Graphing Calculator itself, I’ve never used it, but this story is great.

The Devil is in the Detail

Published
by
blogmywiki
on December 11, 2004
in Playmobil, children and family life
. 1 Comment

My friend Jon likes Playmobil.

I beg to differ.

We have large amounts of Playmobil in our house. Well, I say in our house - I should also say under our house.

The very detail that Jon applauds means that Playmobil figures have tiny parts - such as cuffs - which my children like to stuff down the cracks between the floorboards. (Yes, it serves me right for still having stripped floorboards).

I spent hours assembling the - admittedly beautiful - Playmobil Pirate Ship, and it took my children minutes to totally trash it, to deconstruct it, to post vital elements under the floor. It was the same with the small boats and fire fighters that my wife brought back from New York.

Occasionally I lever up a floorboard or two and recue a selection of daggers, spears and other tiny plastic pirate paraphanalia.

So Playmobil is banned this Christmas. Lego is in. Even the smallest 1×1 Lego brick won’t go down the largest floorboard gap.