Universal Media announced awhile ago that it would be introducing iPhone control into some of its Blu-ray titles, starting with “Fast & Furious,” the Vin Diesel/Paul Walker romp that saw the lucrative car racing series return to its humble origins. Now, Universal is extending the iPhone/Blu-ray connection to a much wider swath of its library thanks to “pocket BLU,” a new app for Apple’s handheld devices.

pocket BLU is a free download from the App Store that allows your iPhone to become a remote control for operating Blu-ray discs from Universal. It won’t work with just any movie, of course. Blu-ray discs need to be played using a Wi-Fi connected player, for one, and the title has to be specifically enabled to work with pocket BLU, something which will be indicated by a conspicuously placed logo.

The app will allow you to control playback of the film, and jump backwards and forwards to any point in the movie using a visual time line. You’ll also have access to a pop-up keyboard for entering data, which will definitely make any typing you need to do with your Blu-ray movie much easier. Finally, some titles will offer the ability to stream special content from the disc to your iPhone, which can then be stored for later viewing.

The app has promise, but limited as it is to one major distributor’s titles, it feels a little like yet another extraneous feature designed to add value to a format that’s failing to catch on with most consumers. Chances are, I’m never going to watch or care about the additional features included for pocket BLU users anyway, so why not just stick to playing back digital content on my Mac and using Rowmote or VLC Remote to control it? Take it from me, Universal, you’ll be far better off if you focus on delivering content to the iPhone platform, instead of just control mechanisms.

Microsoft issued updates for Office 2004 and 2008 covering security issues for both versions, as well as an XML conversion tool. The Office 2008 update also includes a number of minor fixes to enhance stability.

Regarding security, both updates address vulnerabilities “that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer’s memory with malicious code.” Opening a “specially crafted” Word or Excel file could grant the attacker the same user rights as the local user, including administrative rights if applicable. The XML Conversion Tool was also updated to address this issue.

The 12.2.3 update for Mac Office 2008 update also focuses on stability. In Word, general crashing issues have been addressed. The update also fixes the annoying text-spacing bug when opening some Windows Office documents. For Excel, crashing issues when using PivotTables has been addressed. PowerPoint also addresses stability. Apparently, Entourage is stable enough, though there is a new junk mail definition file. Finally, Microsoft Document Connection for the Mac gets several minor upgrades and fixes.

While this minor update is welcome, many Mac Office users are waiting for information about, if not an actual release of, Outlook for the Mac. In August, we learned Mac Outlook will be out by Christmas 2010, will be built from the ground up using Cocoa, and will have many features we desire, but since then nothing. How about an update on that?

With the release of 10.6.2, Apple killed unsupported support for the Atom processor — the processor used in low-cost netbooks. Certain models of netbooks could run OS X quite easily, and people used them to make the Little Netbook Apple Refuses to Make. While it’s a stretch to say Apple has killed the hackintosh market, it’s certainly proving it isn’t going to sit around and ignore it.

The reaction has been interesting and varies from casual indifference, to the defense of Apple’s action, to thinking Apple cancelled Christmas. While I’ve been a vocal supporter of Apple’s right to continue to club Palm over the Pre syncing fiasco, I imagine it’ll sound hypocritical when I say I’m disappointed in Apple over this move.

Up until now, Apple’s stance with the hackintosh community has largely been don’t ask, don’t tell. The people who bought a netbook and, hopefully, bought a copy of OS X to install it, were aware of the risks of doing so. Getting it to run might involve waving a dead chicken at the screen, or it could be completely painless. However, the person undertaking this task knew of the risks. So, there was little harm done.

I’d like to take a look at some of the armchair theories I’ve seen, and offer my own armchair analysis of them.

Apple wasn’t happy with the (alleged) piracy

The piracy angle has two fronts: your interpretation of the EULA, and how many copies of OS X running on hackintoshes were purchased.

In terms of the EULA, while I know Apple strongly disagrees with this, my personal take is as long as I’ve bought a legal license of OS X (and if it’s an upgrade license like Snow Leopard, I have the requisite Leopard copy), if I want to install it on a piece of non-Apple gear as long as I don’t waste Apple’s or mine time with supporting it, I’m in the clear. Now, this is not legal advice in any way, and all the usual disclaimers. It may be a tenuous stretch, but in this case I don’t consider a person creating such a hackintosh a “pirate.”

The second front, though, has no defense. If you’re creating a hackintosh and download a torrent or borrow a buddy’s disc, and don’t own a corresponding license, you’re a pirate. Where things get gray is if you’re downloading a hacked OS X distro, but have a legal license, are you a pirate? I have no data on how many hackintoshes were running pirated OS X installs, and I don’t have any corresponding data on how many Snow Leopard installs are legal. That said, since Apple offers no copy protection, I’m going to say that piracy wasn’t a motivator.

Apple didn’t like seeing netbooks with Apple stickers on them

In the somewhat wonky world of Apple’s Land of Preventing User Confusion, I can actually see this one being a reason for doing this. Now, I go to a fairly technical university and the overall number of netbooks I’ve seen is small, and zero of them have been running OS X (unscientific poll taken while trying to find tables at the canteen and library). I’ve never actually seen a hackbook, much less one with an Apple sticker slapped on it. But there are enough pictures on Flickr of people doing this, so I can see Apple getting irate and going, “OK, enough already.” Who knows, maybe people were walking into Apple stores looking for “that cute little Apple laptop I saw the nice guy at the airport using.”

Apple doesn’t have products running the Atom chipset

I’ll buy this one. While having support for the chipset doesn’t hurt anything, it’s unnecessary code. Maybe Apple was thinking of using the chipset and decided against it. Maybe knowing support for that chipset was keeping Jobs up at night. If Apple does end up using the chipset, it’s easy enough to re-enable the code in the future. Which is about as close as I’ll get to mentioning the oft-rumored, never-promised Tablaslabawhatevah. Some have opined that by doing this code cleanup Apple didn’t know it was breaking Atom support. I don’t agree. While it’s possible there’s nothing evil about its intent, I think it was intentional.

The Psystar lawsuit forced its hands

Now we’re getting somewhere. Up until recently, creating a hackintosh was very much a do-it-yourself affair. You had to get the hardware and do the grunt work to get the OS on it. Granted, while it’s gotten a lot easier over the years and many sites have complete walkthroughs, it’s still an undertaking. Psystar, though, upped the ante. It recently released the Rebel EFI tool which, allegedly, will allow you to install OS X on darn near anything. It’s not a stretch to assume it’s going to sell a netbook running OS X. Given the lawsuit, I believe Apple did this to both be able to demonstrate to a court it has taken measures to prevent OS X from running on un-supported hardware, as well as eliminate a future product line from Psystar.

Like I said, I’m a little disappointed in Apple. But I can understand why it would cut the code for an unused chip. I’ve given some thought to getting a netbook and hackintoshing it, but after I got my new MacBook Pro a month or so ago, that desire faded away. I’m much happier using Apple-built hardware. I have a Dell Ultraportable laptop for work, and the small trackpad on that drives me nuts…I don’t want to think of one smaller.

What about you? What do you think of Apple’s decision?

Despite controlling a much smaller share of the market, Apple is now much more profitable than Nokia, overtaking the handset maker as the most lucrative company in the business of selling cell phones. Apple also overtook Samsung during the last financial quarter, so it actually jumped from third to first place overall among global cell phone companies.

Research firm Strategy Analytics (via Reuters) points out that while Apple is now the most profitable company in the cell phone industry, both Nokia and Samsung both still beat the Cupertino company in terms of sheer size. That’s especially good news for Apple, which makes much more on a per-unit basis than any other mobile phone maker. It makes approximately $320 pure profit on each iPhone sold, according to Strategy Analytics.

Estimated profits for Apple during the third financial quarter of this year are around $1.6 billion, compared with $1.1 billion for Nokia during the same period. It’s a commanding lead, and one that will likely only grow as Apple continues to end exclusivity deals around the world, opening up iPhone sales to more and more potential subscribers.

Of course, there isn’t a direct relationship between Apple’s gain and the slides Nokia and Samsung are experiencing. Other factors are at work, including the growing popularity of Google’s Android platform, which is being adopted by more cell phone makers and network providers. The arrival of the Palm Pre probably also had a negative impact on the handset sales of the two industry leaders.

Nokia is in the midst of a legal battle with Apple over what it sees as blatant copyright violation. Charles recently wrote about the conflict over intellectual property between the two firms. Nokia alleges that the iPhone infringes on not one, not two, but 10 patents it holds regarding wireless tech and standards. The timing of the suit, which comes shortly following a significant drop in market share for Symbian OS, seems quite suspect.

The future for Apple looks bright indeed, so long as it can continue taking in the same incredibly high profit margins on the iPhone. Part of its continued ability to do so is probably due to the fact that the 3GS iPhone revision actually seemed to require very little change on the production side, which would go a long way to keeping manufacturing costs down. A significant update will require more time to become profitable, but Apple’s continued success with the device means that the turnaround time required for that to happen will be remarkably short.

After heavy promotion, including a little negative advertising, Verizon launched the Droid over the weekend, and two days later the first sales estimates are in: 100,000.

Speaking with Bloomberg, Analyst Mark McKechnie of Broadpoint AmTech thinks that’s pretty good. Noting that Verizon had 200,000 Droids on the shelves for launch, he said most stores sold at least half their inventory.

“I see the first few days as encouraging,” McKechnie said. “There seems to be pretty good demand — they’ve taken the right steps and picked a good partner with Google on the Android side.”

While that may be true, comparing the Droid to the iPhone and the Palm Pre during their launch weekends paints a different picture…or chart.

According to Apple, both the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS sold more than a million units during their first weekend. Some might argue that’s an unfair comparison, in that both iPhones were available in multiple countries. Both also benefited from the App Store, though that was far more of an advantage for the 3GS. When the iPhone 3G went on sale, there were only 500 apps available, compared to more than 10,000 for the Droid now.

Still, a more fair comparison might be found with the original iPhone, as it too was sold in the U.S. on a single network. However, it should also be pointed out that Verizon has more customers than AT&T, and that the original iPhone was not a 3G device, and that the 8GB model cost $599.

Nonetheless, Verizon’s 100,000 Droids looks pretty good next to Apple’s 270,000 iPhones, except for one thing. That number does not include Sunday sales, which fell on July 1 and were part of a new quarter. It’s very possible Apple sold as many as 400,000 iPhones during that first weekend of lines around the block.

Of course, lines aren’t everything. As Verizon spokesperson David Samberg said to CNET regarding Friday’s Droid launch, “long lines forming outside are flashy,” but the goal is a “a steady stream of people” over days and weeks. Perhaps the Droid would be better compared to Palm’s smartphone, which is estimated to have sold around 50,000 units during its launch weekend.

It’s looks like Verizon may have a “Pre killer” in the Droid.

Earlier this year (right at the beginning, in fact), we brought news that the Video Electronics Standard Association (VESA) might potentially make the Mini DisplayPort standard, meaning that manufacturers outside of Apple can now use it in their products without Apple’s approval, including rival computer makers, among others.

The Mini DisplayPort (mDP) standard is described as a smaller form factor of the DisplayPort connector itself. The smaller connector is aimed at devices like thin portable computes and add-in cards that need to support multiple display interfaces. Hopefully, display and display accessory makers will adopt the standard, reducing the need to purchase expensive Apple-branded adapters.

The new mDP is for Version 1, Revision 1a of the standard, though DisplayPort 1.2 including mDP is in the works, which will double the available bandwidth of the cable tech to 21.6 Gb/second. That would mean that multi-monitor support via a single cable would be feasible, as well as higher resolutions and improved color depth and refresh rates. 3-D displays necessary for demanding graphical applications could also be supported with the new version of the standard.

As a result of this new standard creation by VESA, we could see a flood of mDP-toting computing devices, or we could see very little change at all. As with FireWire, many computer makers might opt to skip mDP or DP in favor of more established technologies like DVI and VGA, since they are more widely available and don’t necessitate a change to manufacturing processes. The one thing mDP has going for it is its size, and makers of MacBook Air competitors will probably be the first to bite, if anyone does.

Today is the day the iPhone stopped being an exclusive in the UK. Officially, as of 7 a.m., the device went on sale at Orange retailers across the UK, and the carrier is already claiming that the iPhone has gone over exceedingly well with consumers, despite already having been available to O2 customers since its initial launch.

By the end of business today, the newest UK iPhone carrier on the block will have sold well more than 30,000 iPhones, according to gadget web site T3. Not bad for what’s technically a relaunch of an already available device. Compare that with Motorola’s claim of 100,000 Droid units moved in three days in the U.S. Properly framed and in context, the iPhone figures Orange is claiming are much more impressive, and show that hype aside, any competitor still has a long way to go to contend with Apple.

Orange also claims that the impressive sales numbers represent a new record for first day handset device sales in the UK, at least regarding published results. The launch sales of the device have also helped Orange’s own Wednesdays app climb to the top of the Entertainment category charts, and achieve the No. 2 ranking overall in the free section of the App Store.

Vodafone, which has yet to launch the iPhone, but intends to in early 2010, didn’t want to just sit back and let Orange have its day in the sun uncontested. The UK cell service provider is hoping to convince some would-be iPhone buyers to step back and wait until its own launch, by reporting that in tests (which I’m sure were completely unbiased), the Vodafone network is the fastest using the iPhone:

“We’ve been out and about testing our network across the UK. Whilst our guys were watching the latest YouTube clips on the iPhone they found that Vodafone delivered the fastest download time for a 10-minute video.”

Vodafone provided not a single scrap of statistical evidence to back up its claim, which is only fair since Orange didn’t provide any to support its claim regarding sales numbers, either.

Orange recently came under scrutiny for its reported 750MB cap on data usage under its “Unlimited” plan, and for imposing bizarre restrictions on how network data may be used, restrictions that seemed, if taken at face value, to basically prohibit 90 percent of iPhone usage. Obviously, the company isn’t actually preventing its iPhone customers from doing things like using IM applications, and since no one’s had a chance to hit that 750MB limit as of yet, things appear to be going more than smoothly for the big launch.

AppleGazette’s Kevin Whipps addresses the quandary over how to choose between a MacBook and a MacBook Pro, noting that it used to be that if you wanted a 13-inch Mac laptop (excluding the MacBook Air), the only option was the original MacBook. Now with a 13-inch aluminum MacBook Pro on the market, the decision has become more complex.

Kevin allows that the 13″ MacBook Pro doesn’t give you a lot more value for your dollar, comparatively. I beg to differ, but there’s a large element of subjectivity in any such judgment, with many variables such as how much you value FireWire support (some of us a lot), how important a SD Card slot is to your needs, and whether the premium look, fit, finish, and durability of the Pro’s aluminum unibody construction justifies the 20 percent higher price.

20 Percent Higher Price — 20 Percent More Value?

Personally, I think these factors do add up to 20 percent more real value and then some, although Kevin has a point about the two machines being pretty much clones when it comes to core computing power. For example, it now appears that even Apple’s nominal 4GB maximum RAM upgrade spec for the MacBook is completely arbitrary. OWC is offering 8GB memory upgrade kits for the plastic unibody MacBook.

The MacBook comes with a 250GB hard drive, which is more than respectable for standard equipment, especially since the 13″ MacBook Pro’s base $1,199 model comes with a more modest 160GB drive. With the MacBook, 320GB and 500GB drives are BTO options, but that bumps the price to MacBook Pro levels.

The Case for the 15″ MacBook Pro

Kevin actually includes the 15″ MacBook Pro in his comparison, noting that at 5.5 pounds, the unibody 15-incher is not a whole lot heavier than the 13″ MacBook and MacBook Pro units at 4.7lb. and 4.5lb. respectively, and offers much more expansive screen real estate at its 1440 x 900 resolution. Being a former 17″ PowerBook user who recently switched from the big, old ‘Book’s 1440 x 900 display to an aluminum unibody MacBook’s more cramped 1280 x 800 13.3″ screen, I have to agree, and the latest $1,699 entry-level 15″ Pro is especially price-enticing.

However, note well that if you need the heavy-duty graphics support provided by the discrete NVIDIA 9600M GT GPU with 256MB of dedicated VRAM, you’re still going to have to pony up $1,999 for the middle-model 2.66GHz 15″ Pro. The $1,699 unit is essentially identical in power to the high-end $1,499 13″ MacBook Pro, and has only the integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics chipset (which should be more than adequate if you’re not into high-end graphics or video, or serious gaming) that annexes up to 256MB of your system RAM for video support.

A No-Brainer

Personally, while I find the new polycarbonate unibody MacBook very attractive — a quantum improvement over the old, iBook-esque MacBook form factor — my recommendation remains if you can somehow scratch up the extra $200, the base 2.26GB MacBook Pro 13″ represents the zenith of value and power for the money that Apple has ever offered in a portable computer, and if you’re willing to go with an Apple Certified Refurbished unit, the Apple Store currently has them available for the same $999 price as the new plastic MacBook, with the same warranty and AppleCare eligibility.

For me, it’s a no-brainer.

The second minor incremental update for OS X Snow Leopard was released today, and it contains the usual expected bug fixes. It is also is said to contain built-in support for Apple’s new Magic Mouse, and may or may not remove support for Intel Atom processors. If you happen to be using a hackintosh and can confirm or deny whether or not the latest update breaks your system, please comment below and let us know.

You can download the update via Software Update now, or get it directly from the Apple Support site. Here’s Apple’s rather lengthy description of the update, including major bug fixes:

The 10.6.2 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes for:

• an issue that might cause your system to logout unexpectedly
• a graphics distortion in Safari Top Sites
• Spotlight search results not showing Exchange contacts
• a problem that prevented authenticating as an administrative user
• issues when using NTFS and WebDAV file servers
• the reliability of menu extras
• an issue with the 4-finger swipe gesture
• an issue that causes Mail to quit unexpectedly when setting up an Exchange server
• Address Book becoming unresponsive when editing
• a problem adding images to contacts in Address Book
• an issue that prevented opening files downloaded from the Internet
• Safari plug-in reliability
• general reliability improvements for iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, MobileMe, and iDisk
• an issue that caused data to be deleted when using a guest account

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3874.

For information on the security content of this update, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

O2 just announced what seems like a fairly magnanimous gesture on its part today, in preparation for the launch of the iPhone on other UK carriers and the end of iPhone exclusivity in that country. That should mean that O2 customers who want to take their business elsewhere can have their phones unlocked as early as tomorrow, since Nov. 10 is the stated launch date for Orange UK’s iPhone offerings.

The news, which comes via The iPhone Blog, is a promising sign for all iPhone users. If Apple is at all a party to the decision to allow unlocking of its devices in countries where the iPhone is available on multiple networks, then hope exists for countries like Canada, too, where the iPhone recently became available on Bell and Telus, as well as Rogers, the original carrier.

O2 CEO Matthew Key describes in an interview with the Times Online how customers will be able to unlock, though that won’t relieve them of their contractual obligations:

Once the iPhone becomes available on other UK networks, we will allow O2 customers to unlock their iPhones, although of course they will still need to honor any outstanding contract period they have. At the end of their contract period, they are entirely free to move to another operator — though naturally we hope they won’t want to!

It isn’t clear how the unlocking procedure will actually work. Will users have to physically visit an O2 store, or can it be done over the phone using iTunes at home? Whatever the method, O2 is doing the right thing by providing its customers a choice, which is a good faith gesture which should end up building customer loyalty and avoiding resentment. No word yet on whether or not other UK carriers will be offering the same service for their iPhone devices.

The first iPhone worm has been discovered. It comes to us via Australia, and appears to be limited to that country for now, although it has the potential to spread. It also stars Rick Astley, so to speak. The work changes the iPhone’s wallpaper to an image of the 1980s pop singer, who’s enjoyed a recent resurgence thanks to the Rick-rolling Internet phenomenon.

The worm has the ability to break into jailbroken iPhones only. Even if you’ve jailbroken, you still aren’t vulnerable unless you’ve also installed SSH, and not changed the default password after doing so. As a result, only a small fraction of the larger iPhone community is probably susceptible to the “ikee virus,” as it is called in its own source code.

Still, it shows that as the platform matures and becomes more widespread, it also becomes the target of more malicious attacks. Most hackers, like any businesspeople, are interested in the bottom line, and part of that involves targeting the largest group of people possible. With millions of users worldwide, the iPhone is definitely an appealing mark. ikee’s creator, a hacker calling himself “ikex,” cites a different explanation for this particular worm’s creation:

Why?: Boredom, because i found it so stupid the fact that on my initial scan of my 3G optus range i found 27 hosts running SSH daemons, i could access 26 of them with root:alpine. Doesn’t anyone RTFM anymore?

In the case of this worm, which only changes the background wallpaper to the Astley photo with the slogan, “ikee is never going to give you up” across the top, Graham Cluley of SophosLabs suggests it’s really only an experiment:

The source code is littered with comments from the author suggesting the worm has been written as an experiment. One of the comments berates affected users for not following instructions when installing SSH, because if they had changed the default password the worm would not have been able to infect them.

While not dangerous in and of itself (it actually sort of provides a service by reminding users to take precautions), it could open the door for similar programs with less innocuous payloads. Hopefully, jailbreak users will learn from the experience and be prepared if someone more sinister tries to do the same thing again.

It’ll be interesting to see whether Apple latches onto this as a means to further decry the evils of jailbreak. If it leads to more serious exploits, it definitely would constitute a good reason to stay on the straight and narrow. In either case, expect to see more security concerns surrounding the iPhone as it continues its commercial success.

According to a report by the Silicon Alley Insider, if you’re looking to hire an iPhone dev, it’s probably best to make sure you do a thorough background check before you do. Some coders have been claiming credit for work they didn’t do, and are using the false accolades to try and wrestle more work from unsuspecting companies and individuals looking to cash in on the App Store phenomenon.

Some of the lies being perpetrated are coming from firms that look otherwise legit. Lots of offshore development companies are cashing in on the trend by providing low-cost alternatives to in-house or domestic U.S. solutions, and some of those are taking serious heat for what appear to be bald-faced lies.

One of the more high-profile apps involved in the scam is TapBots‘ popular iPhone unit conversion application, ConvertBot. ConvertBot’s design and intuitive interface have earned it praise from both the press and iPhone users, and it remains a popular app in its category. According to Ars Technica, TapBots partner Paul Haddad recently received a surprising inquiry from a client about his program:

This prospective client wasn’t looking to hire TapBots for any development work, they were looking for confirmation that a development firm out of India did the coding on ConvertBot, a popular TapBots application. The client had found Trucid, the supposed coders of ConvertBot, on the Rentacoder.com website, a virtual cork board where companies can hang their business cards. Trucid quoted a sum of $2,400 for an application similar to ConvertBot. The only problem? TapBots designs and writes all of its applications entirely in house.

At least the company in this case was smart enough to make some inquiries before going ahead and hiring the coding company making the false claims. Other people might not be so discerning and cautious.

Another developer, Sugar Cube, Inc. operating out of San Francisco, only discovered that others were taking credit for its work when prospective clients noted that they’d already seen the screenshots included in Sugar Cube’s pitch materials in packages from other development firms. Apparently, Sugar Cube had been trying to secure referral relationships with some other firms, and in so doing had sent around a sampler package. Some of these companies were then redistributing the materials as their own.

It’s a disturbing trend, but one to be expected with something like the App Store, which many see as an opportunity to cash in quickly and easily. As the industry matures, expect to see this sort of thing become less and less common, but until then, check and double-check any claims that seem to good to be true.

Recently, Elgato released EyeTV for the iPhone (AppStore Link). At a cost of $4.99, its marketing blurb offers the following functionality:

With the EyeTV app, you can watch, record, and enjoy live and recorded TV on your iPhone or iPod touch. At last, you don‘t have to leave all your great TV shows at home; the EyeTV app puts the power of award-winning EyeTV in the palm of your hand.

The EyeTV app accesses EyeTV running on your Mac at home to deliver these great features to your iPhone:

• Watch live TV and change channels anywhere (Wi-Fi connection required)
• Watch your EyeTV recordings
• Browse the comprehensive Program Guide
• Start recordings back home on your Mac immediately or schedule them for later
• View and edit your recording schedules

How Does it Measure Up?

Now that we know the promises, how does the functionality work in practise and does it live up to the hype? To set the picture accurately; my set up is a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo Mac mini with 2GB of RAM and two Elgato Digital USB Tuner sticks. This is hooked up to an Airport Express, which extends my existing wireless connection from another room. Between myself and my wife, we have an iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 2nd Gen, so I will be testing EyeTV on all three looking for differences.

Setting Up and Preparing

After downloading the EyeTV app from iTunes and installing onto my three iDevices, I had to update EyeTV to version 3.2 on my Mac mini by simply checking for updates. Once updated, switching on iPhone streaming was a simple option in the preferences.

There is also functionality for using Elgato’s servers to allow connecting to your EyeTV device from outside your wireless network called “My EyeTV.” This works in a similar manner to Apple’s “Back To My Mac” functionality of MobileMe and requires UPnP support between your EyeTV host and your router. Because I have an AirPort Express extended network, UPnP didn’t work — but I was able to manually configure a port forwarding rule in my router on port 2170 to make the service work.

Advanced options allow you to require a passcode to connecting a device and the option to automatically convert recordings into a format suitable for streaming at a later time. While Live TV does not need to be prepared, recorded content does.

You can however, also prepare recordings manually, on a case-by-case basis.

After starting the iPhone app and entering my “My EyeTV” details, I get the option of connecting via Wi-Fi (on the bottom) and via “My EyeTV” (on top). When connected to my local wireless, the “My EyeTV” connection did not work (of course you wouldn’t want to do this, but the software doesn’t detect this in any way).

Selecting the local Wi-Fi option connects quickly and presents the app’s main menu.

Watching Live TV

Selecting LiveTV gives a list of channels and what is currently showing.

Clicking on the green icon on the right displays the upcoming programs on that channel.

I can then select the current show to get a summary and an option to “Watch Now.”

This process then takes about 20 seconds of processing and streaming before I get picture and sound, which is smooth and crisp and just as one would expect.

Tapping on the screen brings up the controls which allow pausing, rewinding 30 seconds (and jumping back to the live stream), a volume control and resizing between widescreen (just like in the iPod app).

Pressing the ‘gear’ icon displayed in the top right of the channel listing presents a bandwidth/quality settings screen to enable you to tweak the size of the stream. This worked well and allows you to find the right setting for your moment. The lowest setting is about equal to the early days of You Tube while the highest setting is flawless.

Watching Recordings

Pressing the recordings menu gives you a sub menu to narrow down searching for an existing recording.

Selecting an option (such as Library) gives a list of individual recordings.

While there is no way to search directly for a recording, you can sort the list by a number of means.

Unlike live TV, when watching a recording you get full track scrubbing navigation, not just ‘back 30 seconds.’

The quality of recordings is not configurable like LiveTV is, it depends on the quality options you selected for ‘preparing recordings’ on your Mac. Cellular quality is very low and like You Tube, but if you’re on wireless (or on a jailbroken phone with 3G Un-Restrictor) you get full quality.

Schedules

Schedules let you see what upcoming recordings you have scheduled.

All you can do here is browse and remove an item from the schedule.

Guide

The Guide gives you access to the full electronic TV guide available in your Mac’s EyeTV software, this is exactly the same as when browsing the guide for Live TV, except instead of an option to “Watch Now,” the button is “Record,” which will add the show to your recording schedule.

The Verdict

There is no noticeable speed differences with performance between the iPhone 3G, iPod touch 2nd Gen or the iPhone 3GS. The bottleneck here is available bandwidth and the speed of the host computer. Generally, the functionality works as advertised, however there are some limitations to be aware of, and some version 1.0 bugs that need to be squashed.

• Live streaming does not work on 3G, requires Wi-Fi — thanks AT&T, for affecting my functionality in Australia. However, on a jailbroken phone, I was able to successfully use 3G Unrestrictor to fool EyeTV into thinking it was on Wi-Fi, thus allowing it to work. This worked at a much higher quality than I expected and was also very smooth. Well worth the $2.99 it costs for 3G Unrestrictor.
• Streaming only supports one device at a time. Connecting with my iPhone and watching a live TV stream, then connecting with my iPod touch works, but when actually selecting a channel to view on the iPod touch, it drops the stream for the iPhone. This is probably fair enough as one stream is pretty CPU intensive as it is.
• When both recording a show and streaming live TV, I had two instances of the host application crash, requiring a full EyeTV restart to allow connections again.
• When testing across the Internet while on my work’s wireless, or on 3G, I found my iPhone’s EyeTV app constantly crashing whenever it tried to connect. This seemed to be an issue with the EyeConnect helper software on my Mac mini, which needed to be restarted by turning EyeTV sharing off and on again in my Mac mini.
• When stopping a live or recorded stream, the CPU usage on the host computer often stays high for 5-10 minutes. It looks like its continuing to stream data out and didn’t get the ’stop’ message from the iPhone. This does seem to eventually time out and really isn’t a big problem unless the CPU usage causes you a problem.
• It would be a nice option to be able to ‘prepare’ a recording for the iPhone remotely.

Once Elgato gets a software update out for both ends of the solution (iPhone and OS X) to fix the crash bugs and bring stability to the software, this will be absolutely great. Until then, it’s a bit of hit and miss, it may work fine or it may need someone to be at your computer to restart software before it works, which defeats the purpose. Elgato is working hard on its forums to replicate user’s issues and make this stable, so its a bright future ahead.

There’s no doubt that cloud computing is a growing trend. All you have to look at is the popularity of netbooks to see that many people nowadays will be quite happy with a computing device that gives them access to the web, and not much else.

I’m certainly part of this trend, as I write this story I have the following web-based applications open on my Mac:

• Twitter
• Google Reader
• Evernote
• Google Calendar
• Remember The Milk
• Gmail
• Facebook
• WordPress
• Socialcast
• Lexulous

What surprises me isn’t how many web apps I’m accessing, but how few native Mac applications I am using to access these services. I am using Tweetie to access Twitter, Evernote has it’s own native Mac application and I use BusyCal to access Google Calendar. Apart from that, all of these web services are being accessed either via Safari (Facebook and Lexulous), or via Site Specific Browsers (SSBs), which means I’m using the naked, if you will, web interface for the application.

Two years ago I never would have done this. I actually wrote a whole blog post, on a now defunct blog, about how I eschewed web-based applications in favor of native Mac apps because I wanted a Mac-like experience. As such I used Mail.app to get my email, NetNewsWire for RSS feeds, Omni Focus for tasks, etc. Nowadays I use web-based apps for all those functions.

There were several factors that led me to this place. First of all web based apps have become better in terms of user experience, in some cases even exceeding, in my opinion, the user experience of the native Mac alternative, for example Gmail versus Mail. Although Google’s web apps aren’t particularly pretty, they are well thought out, and some other web apps are almost elegant, like Remember the Milk.

The iPhone has also been a driving force towards web-based applications because they are more likely to offer the ability to easily synchronize over the air. For example, I would love to use Things as my main task manager, but the simple reality is that I never remember to go through the rigamarole of synchronizing via Wi-Fi. If I can’t sync over the air with my iPhone, then I don’t want to use it on my Mac.

Probably the most important driving force, however, has been features. Google Reader is an excellent example of this. I recently went over several native Google Reader clients for the Mac, but despite this range of choices, I’m still using a site specific browser to access Google Reader. Why? Because none of these applications offer the feature set that the actual website does, and I actually use all of those features. I’ve faced similar problems with native Mac apps that purport to give you access to Facebook or WordPress.

The reality is that many web applications have reached the point of complexity that building a third-party client for them becomes very difficult, especially on the desktop where users will demand feature parity, or something close to it. Unless a company is building their own client, such as Evernote, or the service is exceedingly simple, such as Twitter, desktop clients are constantly going to be playing a losing game of catchup.

What all this means for users like myself is that more and more of my computing experience is moving away from the Mac and to the web (subscription required). I love the Mac, I love the combination of stability, elegance, ease of use and power Apple’s computers offer me, but I have to admit that I’m taking less advantage of the platform than I have in the past, and unless something drastic changes, that trend is only going to continue.

Apple doesn’t seem to be making aggressive moves towards building better support for web applications into the operating system, and this may be a dangerous mistake. Someday in the not to distant future something approaching 100 percent of the average user’s computing is going to move online, and when that happens Apple may find itself flat footed in a new world, and I may find myself looking for a computing platform better suited for my actual use.

Even as Verizon continues attacking AT&T’s comparatively poor network with new ads, and by proxy the iPhone, the latest rumor has Apple developing a “worldmode” iPhone capable of running on any network.

The three holiday-themed ads, “Blue Christmas,” “Elves,” and “Misfit Toys,” each highlight the weakness of AT&T’s 3G wireless coverage, but the latter most directly and hilariously attacks the iPhone. Paying homage to the Rankin/Bass animated classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, a familiar-looking device shows up on the Island of Misfit Toys, the place where defective toys are exiled. When the misfits ask why such a great toy that can download apps and browse the web is there, the familiar lackluster coverage map pops up.

The message of each commercial is the same: bad networks ruin even a great phone. AppleInsider is now reporting that perhaps Apple feels the same way, and is preparing to do something about it.

Based on a report from research firm OTR Global “citing sources in the Taiwan handset supply chain,” the hybrid iPhone will use a new chip from Qualcomm allowing it to function on both CDMA and GSM networks. The hybrid iPhone will be available in the third quarter of 2010, which makes sense, as previous reporting puts the end of AT&T’s exclusivity agreement in 2010. Unfortunately, things stop making sense right there.

The research note also states the new iPhone has a 2.8″ screen, compared to 3.5″ for current iPhones. AppleInsider notes rumors from last year about an iPhone with a smaller screen, which turned out to be false, at least at the time.  However, there is another possibility besides a smaller iPhone, that being a smaller iPhone.

What seems more likely at this stage of iPhone development, a major redesign of the existing model or the addition of an iPhone nano? Looking back at the history of the iPod would suggest the latter. Following Palm’s lead with its second webOS phone, the Pixi, Apple could even leave out Wi-Fi to further differentiate the iPhone nano from the iPhone. Actually, a smartphone without Wi-Fi in 2009 would belong on the Island of Misfit Toys, so scratch that, but a “free” iPhone nano under contract would undoubtedly find its way under many a tree this year.

Ten days after updating the Apple TV’s software to version 3.0, Apple has released version 3.0.1 along with an alarming warning about users’ content “temporarily” disappearing.

From the uninformative and unintentionally hilarious support document, if you are running Apple TV 3.0 and “all of your movies, TV shows, and songs appear to be missing” or “all of your movies, TV shows, and songs appear to be present,” you should update to version 3.0.1 immediately.

In a letter to unlucky Apple TV users, the Apple TV team (at least those that still have jobs) gave instructions for updating.

1. Reboot your Apple TV (unplug the power cord and plug it back in)
2. Select Settings > General from the main menu
3. Select Update Software
4. Select Download and Install

After a restart, the problem of disappearing content should be solved. That’s the good news. The bad news is there are still a number of problems with the 3.x software.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt at Apple 2.0 beat me to the Apple Support Forum and found 10,000 page views for the missing content discussion, as well as continuing complaints after updating to the latest version. Reported problems include the Apple TV no longer syncing with iTunes, surround sound problems, new purchases not showing up, as well as performance issues.

It appears Apple’s “hobby,” as the Apple TV has been described by company executives, could use a little more developer attention, not to mention a purpose besides being an iTunes Store kiosk.

As we wrote yesterday, MacHeist is doing a new promotion, this time offering six Mac apps for free. MacHeist has long been controversial in the indie developer community, with many developers believing that the promotion, which offers a bundle of applications at either a steep discount (or in this case for free), reduces the value of the work that developers put into Mac applications. One of the sharpest critics of MacHeist has been Daniel Jalkut, developer of MarsEdit.

In response to the latest MacHeist, Jalkut has organized a counter promotion of indie Mac developers offering a 20 percent discount on their applications. Dubbed the One Finger Discount, in a not-so-subtle nod towards the five finger discount some people say you get from MacHeist, the promotion is being offered for this week only. There are now over 40 different developers participating and new ones are being added all the time.

If you’re interested on picking up a discount on some interesting Mac software, or if you want to participate check out the website here.

Seeking to better manage the holiday deluge of visitors to Apple retail outlets, the company is now offering customers the option of ordering online and picking up purchases at their local store.

According to the new webpage, you can reserve an item “online today and it will be waiting for you to pick up and purchase at an Apple Retail Store from December 15 to 24.”

Customers using the program are first asked to choose a retail store. The service is currently available in the U.S., Canada, UK, and Australia. Choosing from iPods, iPhones, Mac laptops and desktops, but curiously not the Apple TV, customers then sign in with their Apple ID to reserve their purchase.

Unfortunately, customers must still pay at the brick-and-mortar store, so you won’t be able to completely escape the wait this holiday season. However, that’s still arguably better than having to spend all day at home waiting for a delivery. That benefit, plus the guarantee of an item being reserved, are the big advantages of the program. Plus, for an extra $5, those buying iPods and laptops can have their purchases wrapped in a “signature gift box.” Nothing says Merry Christmas like an Apple logo.

It’s time to delve in to the App Store and take a look at a select few releases that could find a happy home on your iPhone. This week I’ve selected four games that I’ll be zoning out with this weekend.

Of course there are scores of games out for the iPhone, but we’ve been lucky enough to have a few really excellent titles released in the past week or so.

My top pick for this week is 8-bit rhythm-action game Ninja Honda Karate. Plus, I’ve also been looking at Eliminate Pro, Horror Racing and Minima.

Ninja Honda Karate ($2.99)

Amongst the endless generic game clones constantly arriving at the App Store, Ninja Honda Karate is a true breath of fresh air. It takes 8-bit video-games, Japanese culture, chip music and rhythm action gameplay, mashing it all together into a multicolor milieu of awesome.

The game premise just barely makes sense. You play as Karate Alberto Honda, a very Mario-esque but nonetheless cute hero. The aim is to karate chop coins in time to the blippy bloppy beat. Occasionally you’ll tap a mushroom, triggering a psychedelic rocket launch across the screen. At the end of each level, before the scores are tallied, you’ll also deliver a giant mushroom to the princess.

While the premise is gloriously nonsensical and convoluted, the gameplay is plain simple. Coins come out of various tubes on the screen, as they emerge, you simply tap the coin in time with the music. In effect, you end up performing the soundtrack as you play the game. The game certainly isn’t innovative, but that’s the point: it’s a beatific mashup of everything else.

Eliminate Pro (Free)

Developed under the apt codename FPS, this might not be the first first-person shooter to hit the iPhone, but it’s certainly the most polished. Eschewing a proper plot, or even single player mode, Eliminate is all about big guns, futuristic robotic suites and online multiplayer death matches.

The game certainly looks the part. Inside the immaculately designed arenas — all shiny metal-plating and steel walkways — you’ll face competitors in customised power-suits, armed to the teeth with explosive weaponry. Eliminate is, in essence, the pocket-sized lovechild of Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament.

However, a word of warning about the game’s price. It’s free to download and free to play, however your character is given a limited amount of energy per day. When your energy runs out, you’re no longer allowed to compete. You can either wait 24 hours for your energy to re-charge, play a few practice rounds or buy more.

And that’s where some of the more frequent players may take issue. Purchasing energy cells, starting at a dollar a pack, just isn’t good value. It’s a great quality game, certainly worth downloading, but don’t expect to play for free more than a couple of times per day.

Horror Racing ($2.99)

Halloween is over and Horror Racing was released around three weeks ago, so this almost didn’t make the cut. Horror Racing’s saving grace though is that it’s actually a really fun little game. The game brings to mind old-school arcade racers, viewed from above the track you have the perfect vantage point to observe the havoc and wreak devastation.

The game has very little to do with horror, though. The characters are more cute than scary. The circuits are awash with browns and greens, making it look like a muddy mess. The sound helps remedy the situation. The constant RC car buzz as you speed your way around the circuits is perfect.

And then there’s the gameplay itself. The races, a mix of explosions and skill, are downright fun. There are several gameplay modes, including an excellent on-going Championship Mode. As you play through the game, you’ll earn money which can then be spent upgrading your car’s engine, armour or weaponry. All that’s really missing with Horror Racing is a multiplayer online mode.

Minima (99 cents)

Clearly I’ve got a bit of a think for anything wrapped in retro visuals. I suppose I miss the glory days of my old BBC Micro and Commodore Amiga. My final pick for this week takes the retro aesthetic a step further, reducing the graphics to a grid of giant glowing pixels.

Minima takes after its name and keeps the gameplay incredibly minimal. You control a color-changing pixel. The objective is to avoid other pixels by changing color and blending in with them. Further enhancing the game’s retro-vibe, each of the nine levels is styled after a particular classic video-game.

That’s all the picks for this week. I’ll be back in seven days with a fresh selection of App Store recommendations.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

The new plastic unibody MacBook is arguably the second-best MacBook model Apple has produced yet (trumped only by the late 2008 aluminum unibody MacBook). So why am I finding myself unexpectedly underwhelmed and disappointed with it?

When rumors began circulating in late summer about an imminent new unibody MacBook in polycarbonate plastic. Being a consummate Apple laptop aficionado, I was excited. Speculation that it would sell in the $700 – $800 range further whetted my anticipation but I was also expecting something insanely great. After all, Apple could build on what it had learned making polycarbonate MacBooks for three and half years (the best-selling Mac model ever) combined with the unibody engineering of the MacBook Pros adapted to plastic materials.

Instead of Insanely Great, We Get…OK

However, instead of insanely great, we get OK — or perhaps just a bit more than OK. I like it a lot better than the original MacBook, but there’s nothing really exciting or special to get up in the night and write home about. It’s just a good, solid-performing machine with better case engineering and build quality than its predecessor, and better-looking, but alloyed with some strange compromises that undermine its desirability and the “must-have” factor.

The case aesthetics are definitely a major step up from the iBook-esque previous model, whose looks were getting tired after eight and a half years. I like white computers and I like glossy finishes, and this has both, although I think Apple is blowing an opportunity by not offering it in black as well, and the high gloss is proving quite controversial with some.

I think the MacBook’s all-white keyboard looks more attractive and inviting, and will be easier to see (I’m not a touch typist), than the black keys on my aluminum Macbook, which are probably my unfavorite element of its generally pleasing appearance.

As for robustness, I haven’t got my hands on one yet, being out here in the Nova Scotia backwoods 150 miles from the nearest Apple reseller, but reportedly this new unibody machine has a solid feel, with no case flexibility or squeaks and rattles, and excellent panel fits, which is what I would expect based on my own aluminum unibody machine. Actually, the new MacBook’s rubbery-coated bottom panel is an aluminum stamping.

True Mediocrity Rears its Ugly Head

On the downside, true mediocrity rears its ugly head in the context of I/O connectivity and expansion, with an impoverished port array comprised of two USB ports (only one fully powered), Ethernet, a mini DisplayPort a combo headphone/line-in port (you can’t use both earphones and a microphone at the same time) and a security slot. No FireWire and, most bizarrely, no SD card slot (“Pro feature?” — get real Apple). No HDMI either.

FireWire and no expansion headroom are the big disappointments to me. I’m living daily with the vicissitudes of FireWirelessness with my aluminum unibody MacBook, and I’m not cheerily disposed, but Apple seems determined to dump FireWire wherever it can get away with it. When USB 3.0 is finally incorporated, maybe there will be a case for dropping FireWire, but USB 2.0 is an abominably lame and crippled substitute at this point. I’m dumbfounded that Apple didn’t learn its lesson from the chorus of boos when it tried that with the aluminum MacBook (OK, so I bought one anyway, and I like it almost unreservedly except for the FireWire crippling, but that really rankles).

No Legitimate Excuse

As for no expansion, there’s no legitimate excuse. Even the humblest tiny little $300 PC netbooks comes equipped with SD Card readers, and often three USB ports as well. There’s no satisfactory excuse for Apple leaving the SD Card slot out of the new MacBook and providing a measly two USB ports — only one of them delivering full bus power. My speculative deduction is that it’s just Apple contriving to put some distance between the MacBook and the more expensive 13″ MacBook Pro specs-wise.

Ample Power

In the positive column, the new MacBook’s internals pretty much match the current base 13-inch MacBook Pro’s: a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo with a 3MB L2 cache, a 1066MHz frontside bus and 2GB of standard RAM, and the ubiquitous NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics chipset, as well as a similar LED backlit display — the only difference being that the Pro has a 60 percent greater color gamut. Power-wise, I would find it more than satisfactory, having no complaints in that department about my 2.0GHz MacBook.

Then there’s the built-in, non swappable battery, which I have definitely mixed feelings about. Apple rates it at seven hours runtime, but a real-world four-to-five hours will be experienced more typically, after which you have to find a power outlet. I prefer swappable batteries.

In summary, while I want to like this new MacBook, I don’t find its $200 lower price nearly compelling enough to even tempt me to not opt instead for the $1,199 13-inch MacBook Pro with its SD card slot, FireWire port, brighter, better color gamut display backlit keyboard, and aluminum case, Certified Refurbished examples of which should be available for about the same price as a new unibody MacBook.

If this machine sold for, say, $799, it would be a whole different value equation — an opportunity missed in my estimation, although it’s harder and harder to argue with Apple’s pricing and marketing strategy given its latest quarterly financial results. I think the new MacBook will continue to be a strong seller for Apple, but I wish it would have tried a little harder with this one, though. Don’t you?