Monthly Archives: May 2007

Sync your Motorola C390 with iSync for free

Motorola C390

Recently my SonyEricsson cellphone broke and I wanted to replace it by my Bluetooth enabled Motorola C390. Apple’s iSync is really great to keep your address book and calendar in sync with your cellphone. Unfortunately the C390 is not supported by default. Your Mac can pair with the phone and use it for data connections but iSync does not support it, see [1].

There seem to be some commercial solutions which may help, though I didn’t test one of them, just search the web for iSync and C390 and you will find them.

iSync C390

Luckily I also found this guy’s Howto in a forum about adding Motorola C390 support to iSync for free just by modifying a xml file [2]. However, since I am running Mac OS X 10.4.9, I recognized slight changes in the xml tag names. That’s why I noted the instructions below.

Enabling Motorola C390 for iSync

  • Right click on the iSync Application
  • Show Package Contents
  • Goto Contents/Plugins/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/ Plugins/PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin/Contents/ Resources
  • Backup and modify the MetaClasses.plist file to make it look like below in the beginning
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>com.motorola.C390</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Identification</key>
        <dict>
            <key>com.apple.gmi+gmm</key>
            <string>"Motorola CE, Copyright 2000"+C390</string>
        </dict>
        <key>InheritsFrom</key>
        <array>
            <string>com.motorola.usb-bt.0x22B8/0x4902</string>
        </array>
            <key>Services</key>
        <array>
            <dict>
                <key>ServiceName</key>
                <string>com.apple.model</string>
                <key>ServiceProperties</key>
                <dict>
                    <key>ModelIcon</key>
                    <string>MOTC390.tiff</string>
                    <key>ModelName</key>
                    <string>C390</string>
                </dict>
            </dict>
        </array>
    </dict>
</dict>
  • You will need a tiff file, with the name you entered under ModelIcon, but you can just copy it from another one in the same folder as the MetaClasses.plist file
  • Start iSync
  • Select Devices->Add Device from the menu
  • et voilà, your Motorola C390 should show up as a supported phone

I synced my address book and calendar successfully with it, so I don’t know, why the phone is not supported by default. Anyways, use at your own risk.

Wiimote controls Front Row on a PowerBook

Wiimote

I have this 2005 12″ PowerBook G4 with Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.9 and was jealous of the new MacBooks’ Remote Controls. One day I found a movie on youtube about someone controlling Front Row with a Wiimote. I just didn’t find all the links in one place. Maybe this is of help for you. It should work on other Bluetooth enabled Macintosh computers as well.

1. Get Front Row to work on a Mac without Remote Control

2. Install DarwiinRemote

  • Get DarwiinRemote
  • The key mapping matches the one of Front Row by default, though, you might want to change the Wiimote’s + and – buttons to change volume control as well

Works like a charme.

You can also use the Wiimote with DarwiinRemote to go through your PowerPoint Presentations 🙂