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Sat, 04 Mar 2006

Hacking Apple iSync to Work with a Motorola V557

I recently got a new Motorola V557 to replace my ageing Nokia 3650 which had developed an intermittant fault that would cause it to crash. The 557 is a pretty good phone: small, light, good battery life, bluetooth etc with a nifty news ticker thing from Cingular. The only problem is that its not one of the phones supported by Apple's iSync software. I'd gotten used to having all the contacts and calendar items on my laptop synced with my phone and to suddenly lose this capability was a pain. I did a bit of googling and managed to synthesise the following solution from a couple of forum posts.

Make a copy of the iSync application just in case and then edit the following file:

/Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/ \
PlugIns/PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin/Contents/Resources/MetaClasses.plist

That's one long path broken over two lines. The easiest way to do this is from the command line but you can also burrow into the iSync application contents by ctrl-clicking it and selecting "show package contents" from the menu. Search for the existing entry for the Motorola V551 and copy the <key>..</key> line and following <dict>..</dict> lines. Move the editor insertion point below the </dict> line and paste a copy. Now edit the new lines so they look as follows (the changes from the copied V551 entry are shown in bold).

<key>com.motorola.V557</key>
<dict>
    <key>Identification</key>
    <dict>
        <key>com.apple.cgmi+cgmm</key>
        <string>"Motorola CE, Copyright 2000"+V557</string>
        <key>com.apple.gmi+gmm</key>
        <string>"Motorola CE, Copyright 2000"+V557</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>ModelName</key>
                <string>V557</string>
                <key>PhoneIcon</key>
                <string>MOTV551.tiff</string>
            </dict>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>ServiceName</key>
            <string>com.apple.synchro</string>
            <key>ServiceProperties</key>
            <dict>
                <key>stringEncoding</key>
                <string>UCS2</string>
            </dict>
        </dict>
    </array>
</dict>

Save the edited file, close it and then fire up iSync. Add the phone as a new device and run a synchronisation. Voila !

Posted @ 10:40 | Category: /tech/gadgets | Permalink

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