iPhone and iMac get to watch TV

Today equinux entered the TV receiver market for Mac OS X in the United States. equinux' TubeStick hybrid offers more flexibility to enjoy your favorite TV shows on your Mac, iPhone or iPod. The newly announced USB TV receiver allows you to watch, pause and record live television on your Mac in HD quality. And with The Tube software that comes with TubeStick hybrid, users can even chat with other viewers during each TV show. With the new TubeToGo web services you can schedule, manage, publish and watch TV recordings via iPhone or iPod touch on the go.

"We're really excited to introduce TubeStick hybrid today. Nearly ten months after we started to reinvent digital television on the Mac with our The Tube software, we're more than happy to provide our solution to US customers as well", says equinux CEO Till Schadde. "With TubeToGo we introduced another thrilling add-on, that brings your TV recordings directly to your iPhone or iPod touch."

TubeStick hybrid - Always Ready for Reception

TubeStick hybrid has two built-in receivers, enabling you to watch free-to-air digital HDTV (ATSC) as well as digital (QAM) and analog (NTSC) cable television. In areas with ATSC, reception can be picked up by the antenna, in HD quality. The TubeStick hybrid has a white, minimalist design and is one of the smallest devices in its class. It comes with a white compact antenna and a break-out cable, that allows users to connect to their camcorders, analog video recorders and game consoles using S-Video or Composite. TubeStick hybrid is designed to fit perfectly in the USB port of MacBooks and MacBook Pros, without blocking other necessary plugs.

Watch, Chat, Record, and Go with The Tube

TubeStick hybrid includes The Tube 2, equinux' latest edition of its TV solution for Mac users. The Tube is the latest TV software for Mac OS X, that allows you to watch, pause and record your favorite TV shows on your Mac. You can even chat with other TV viewers, while watching a TV program, using the TubeTalk feature. The Tube provides you with manual and automatic Timeshift and lets you rewind the current program to record it from start with its Déjà Vu functionality. With The Tube you can schedule recordings of your favorite TV shows, manage them in a library and sort them by name or by date. The Tube supports Mac OS X's Spotlight to search for recordings and displays a QuickLook preview when showing them in Finder for Mac OS X 10.5.

Remotely Manage and Access your Favorite Recordings

Today equinux also introduced TubeToGo, an optional web-based service that allows you to remotely schedule, manage and watch your recordings with your iPhone or iPod on the go. TubeToGo lets you remotely schedule recordings via a web-based iPhone application, and publish your recordings library on .Mac or to a remote FTP server and watch it via WiFi connection on your iPhone or iPod touch. You can also setup The Tube to automatically create Video Podcasts to watch your favorite shows on the go, even when you're offline.

Price and Availability
TubeStick hybrid will be available, starting in February at your local Apple reseller, from Amazon or the equinux Online Store for only $129.95. TubeStick hybrid is exclusively designed for the US market. TubeStick hybrid is shipped with the latest edition of The Tube and a one month trail for TubeToGo web service. TubeToGo will also be available from February on a subscription basis.

About equinux
equinux (www.equinux.com), located in San Mateo, CA (USA) and headquartered in Munich, Germany, develops and distributes successful Mac solutions for professionals and consumers alike. Today users from all over the world rely on equinux' award-winning and trusted applications. The business solution VPN Tracker is the market-leading VPN client for the Mac OS X Platform. iSale, equinux' successful eBay auctioning solution won several Apple Design Awards, and currently represents the 2006 winner in the most competitive category "Best Mac OS X User Experience".
All product and company names mentioned herein are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
Copyright © 2008 equinux AG. All rights reserved
equinux – Technology for my life.

iPhone sync with multipule computers.

Editor’s Note: The following article is an adapted excerpt from the recently-published Take Control of Your iPhone, a $15 electronic book available for download from TidBits Publishing. The 195-page ebook helps readers understand what’s going on under the hood of the iPhone, with lots of tips for using the iPhone more effectively and an emphasis on troubleshooting assistance for solving problems related to activating, syncing, application crashes, iPhone freezes, handset security, and more.

Although you can certainly sync multiple iPhones to a single computer, the reverse of that—syncing one iPhone to multiple computers, isn’t generally recommended by Apple.

Should you decide to ignore Apple’s advice and connect your iPhone to a secondary computer, don’t worry. Nothing is selected for syncing by default. That is, no contacts, calendars, music, video, or any other data will be selected in iTunes, so there will be no automatic syncing and no potential loss of data on either your iPhone or the computer.


If you click the Sync button, however, an initial sync does occur. Unlike with most iPods, no warning advises against this. Happily, it is still the case that no data are lost on either the iPhone or the secondary computer. All that happens is that an iPhone Backup file is created.

However, if you enable any of the checkboxes in the Info, Music, Photos, Podcasts, or Video tabs, the Apply button appears. If you click Apply, you do typically get a warning message. The exact content of the message, and what will happen if a sync occurs, varies depending upon what you selected. [Note: Although there are minor differences in the user interfaces, the iPhone and the iPod touch behave very similarly here.]

Music, video, and podcasts
If you enable syncing of music or video content (assuming you have previously synced music or video to your iPhone via the first computer), you get a message similar to the one in Figure 1.



Figure 1. This message appears when you set iTunes to sync music or video on a secondary computer (that is, a computer that isn’t the one you sync with normally).

If you continue with the sync, it will erase all the iTunes-specific content on your iPhone, replacing it with the content from the secondary computer, but leaving photos and info content (contacts, calendars, Mail accounts, and bookmarks) intact, despite the use of the word “erase” in the message. Any settings changes you made on the iPhone should remain intact as well.

If your iPhone contains songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store and you connect to a secondary computer that is authorized to play music from your account, the message in Figure 1 includes an additional button to “Transfer Purchases.” See this Apple article for details.

Oddly, at least on recent iterations of the iPhone software, the above warning message does not appear when you attempt to sync podcasts from the secondary computer—even though podcasts are also part of an iTunes library. Instead, either no message appears or a message appears that states that only podcasts will be affected by your sync. In either case, if you go ahead and sync, you’ll get the same result: the newly selected podcast(s) replace the podcasts currently on your iPhone—while the music and video media on your iPhone remain unchanged and intact. I am not sure why podcasts are an exception here, but they are.

Photos
If you enable photo syncing on the secondary computer, you get a message like the one in Figure 2. If you go ahead with the sync, all photos on the iPhone will be replaced, but all non-photo content should remain untouched.



Figure 2. This message appears when you set iTunes to sync photos on a computer different from the one with which you normally sync.

Contacts, calendar events, Mail accounts, and bookmarks
If you tell iTunes to sync any of these types of data and click Apply, you get a message like the one shown in Figure 3.



Figure 3. This message appears when you set iTunes to sync iPhone’s contacts on a computer different from the one with which you normally sync.

In this special case, you can choose to merge information between the iPhone and the second computer rather than overwrite the synced data on the iPhone. The merged data, now on your iPhone, would then sync back to your main computer the next time you sync with it. Thus, this allows you to combine all the types of information managed on the Info tab (contacts, calendar events, Mail accounts, and bookmarks) in multiple computers.

Merging of Info data is the one case where syncing with a second computer can be useful. You can use the iPhone as a means of merging two sets of data from separate computers.

In all other cases, syncing an iPhone with a second computer results in data from the second computer overwriting similar data from the first computer, which is not typically what you want. However, if you had an unusual setup where you wanted, for example, to sync your iPhone to one computer for photos and to another for music, syncing to both computers could accomplish this. To do so, sync photos but not music on one computer, and vice versa on the second. Keep all other settings and content synced with just the first computer.

Sync to More Than One iTunes Library
How would you like to be able to sync music, video, and pod-casts from a second computer to your iPhone, without erasing the content from the first computer that is already on your iPhone? It can be done, but only if you have a "jailbroken" (hacked) iPhone. If so, install SwapTunes via the Installer application on your iPhone.

The only other option is to manually combine the content from multiple computers into a single iTunes Library, on one computer, with which you sync your iPhone.

iPhones Missing in Action

The disappointments on the iPhone front started early for Apple, as TheStreet.com first reported in July. Apple failed to sell out the 1 million iPhones it had supplied on the weekend of the product's debut. The goal was an internal target, say people familiar with the plan.

But Apple didn't exactly blow the number out of the water when reported that it sold 270,000 iPhones in its fiscal third quarter. That total was seen as a letdown to analysts, who had predicted sales of between 200,000 and 700,000 for iPhone's debut quarter.

In the most recent quarter, the gap between what Apple sold and what the telcos activated grew even wider.

As RealMoney columnist Tero Kuittinen points out, Apple says it shipped 2.3 million iPhones and AT&T says it activated 900,000 new iPhone subscribers for the same period.


Tech investors are pondering a bit of a mystery: Apple's (AAPL - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) missing iPhones.

By some analysts' estimates, there are 1.4 million iPhones unaccounted for. That is roughly the gap between the nearly 4 million iPhones Apple says it has sold, and the number of iPhone activations by AT&T (T - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr - Rating) and Apple's European telco partners.

The discrepancy comes amid concerns that Apple's white-hot growth phase has fizzled following what was viewed as disappointing guidance from the company this week. The news also reignites fears that the hugely hyped iPhone may not be quite as popular as first estimated.




Analysts at Sanford Bernstein estimate that Apple has shipped 3.75 million iPhones in total, while telcos have activated about 2.35 million phones. The total unactivated unlocked phones might account for 20% of the difference, leaving 670,000 unaccounted for, says Bernstein.

If the estimates are true, Apple is facing a growing pile of unsold iPhones. The company did not provide an immediate comment.

One of the problems for the iPhone sales is that the current model is a slower 2.5 generation technology, and a faster 3G iPhone will be unveiled in early summer. Another damper on demand, say observers, is AT&T. Consumers have strong feelings about the quality of wireless network coverage, and AT&T has not swept any quality awards on this front.

iPhone vs. Nokia E70 ..read and enjoy!

Please check out the link below, it might be the funniest thing I have seen.
This link provides a review of the iPhone as well as comparisons to a Nokia E70.

I was at work when I read this and could not stop laughing.

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone

iPhone aka iGutiar

iPhone Guitar Hero - Watch more free videos

iPhone jailbreak 1.1.3

Members of the iPhone Dev Team (publicity shy, natch) say they have figured out a “jailbreak” for the recently 1.13 iPhone upgrade.

Publicity shy? Yea. We are talking aboutjailbreak team user names such as netkas, NerveGas, asap18, bgm, Bugout, bushing, chris_, dinopio, drudge, Fred_, gray, MuscleNerd, natetrue, pr3d4t0r, roxfan, Turbo, Zf[strike], np101137, pumpkin, and kroo.

(MuscleNerd. Hah!)

I certainly do not endorse performing the steps I am about to cite. However, it does appear that doing this will quite likely release your iPhone’s heretofore mortal lock with AT&T Mobility.

That said, those folks bound and determined to jailbreak their 1.13-powered iPhone via Windows would perform the following steps:

Start with a 1.1.1 or 1.1.2 jailbroken phone with Installer.app installed.
Plug in your phone via USB to your computer. Download, extract, and run iBrickr Special 1.1.3 jailbreak edition (ibrickr.exe in the archive).
iBrickr will determine what firmware you are running on your phone and make sure you can run the update.
iBrickr will then guide you through the process of obtaining and modifying the 1.1.3 firmware (make sure to read everything thoroughly).
iBrickr will upload the new firmware image to your phone. Note that this only puts the file on your phone and does not modify it at all, yet.
When iBrickr finishes (should take about 10 minutes), it will tell you to go to Installer and install the “1.1.3 soft upgrade” package. Do that.
When the installer finishes (this should take another 10-15 minutes), your phone should reboot with a fresh activated 1.1.3 firmware.
Like I said I can’t suggest you try this. I only wanted to tell you how those thrillseekers who are trying the latest iPhone unbrick are doing it.

Wonder how long until the antidote comes down from Cupertino…