...stuff I do and things I like...

so more fun with Apple MacBooks :-] This time the IR remote. The remote is basically for controlling music or video play back and for doing presentations/slide shows. The fun part is the the IR receiver is on by default and that the MENU button suspends the current desktop and brings up a MENU for choosing music, video or picture play back, thereby interrupting what ever the user is currently doing. So you can take your MacBook remote and go to some place with a lot of MacBooks and annoy people by interrupting what ever they are currently doing. If you don't have a MacBook remote you can just take a programmable remote and record the 6 keys of the MacBook remote and use that. I used my Palm (T|T3) and OmniRemote. So I recorded the signals of the remote and tried, it worked of course.

So tomorrow I will try to find another MacBook to test it if it works there too. I really think there is no authentication or so going on. Hopefully the IR port can be switched off other then with a piece of duct tape *G*

Yes I know this is not really a new thing, still it is funny. Apple people are funny :-)

Update:

Here is the OmniRemote file to emulate the MacBook remote, just send/beam it to your Palm. The Favorite button is mapped to MENU, the Power button is mapped to PLAY, right side up/down is mapped to up-down, left side up/down is mapped to left/right (volume). Have fun! OmniRemoteSeetingsForMacBookRemote.txt

Update2:

It looks like I was wrong. Each remote needs to be paired with the computer(s) before it can control it/tem. The documentation tells you how to do it. What a bummer. Anyway it still should be possible to sniff the IR signal while somebody is using their paired remote. Also I wonder if the pairing is two-way or if only the computer stores a list of allowed remotes (which could possible be brute-forced).