I know that many of our readers will be traveling during the holiday season, so I wanted to share a walk-through that will help keep your MacBook of choice connected on the go. This is an article intended for those using iPhones on carriers that do not officially support tethering. TUAW would like to remind you that this is unsupported and is enabled at the user's own risk. This does require jailbreaking your iPhone, so the unadventurous in the audience may want to pass this up. If you're not already jailbroken, you can download the necessary software, like blackra1n from George Hotz or Pwnage from the iPhone Dev Team.

Once you've jailbroken your iPhone, install or open Cydia and navigate to the "Featured Packages" section. Find and install the package named "Modem." That's it on the iPhone side of things, on your computer, navigate to iphonemodem.com and download the helper application or register the application for $9.99 to disable the registration reminder in the iPhone app (As far as we know, the free version is fully functional). Drag iPhoneModem to your Applications folder.

The setup is really that simple. Now all you have to do is open the application on your computer, click connect, then launch the companion app on your iPhone. The iPhone application will find the network your computer creates and share the Wi-Fi connection between the two devices so you can use your iPhone data plan on your laptop for better browsing. Here's how the developers say it works:

On the computer, the helper application creates a new computer-to-computer (or ad-hoc) Wi-Fi network and configures the system preferences to use the iPhone as an Internet gateway and proxy. On the iPhone, the application opens a routing engine, DHCP, DNS, HTTP, HTTPS and SOCKS proxies and connects to the helper on the computer.

I've had pretty good success with this application in my time with it. I've been using it on and off for over a year -- it's been a great app in clutch situations. I'd recommend it as a virtual stocking stuffer if you have a friend or family member who's jailbroken their iPhone. Let us know your thoughts or your experiences with the app in the comments.

Update

As several commenters have pointed out, there are several other free solutions that seem to be just as easy as iPhoneModem. Please read through the comments to see if any of those solutions suit you better.

See updated response from AT&T below.

With some pretty damning evidence, both FSJ and Gizmodo are shouting at AT&T, which claims that they've upgraded their network although they've spent less each quarter on upgrades since the iPhone was introduced in 2007. AT&T CEO Ralph De La Vega recently said that "AT&T is upgrading its network to cope," and that AT&T is continuing to look into ways to entice users to limit the way they use data.

That statement made sense at one point: give the customers a tiered data structure that's cheaper for those who don't use much bandwidth. This would probably never happen: it's not too often that you see a wireless provider actually help its customers. In reality, we'd probably see data rates stay where they are, but get an increase in price for "unlimited" data as we've come to understand it.

With another look at the information found in AT&T's Financial and Operating Statistics Summary [PDF Link], you begin to see tremendous flaws in AT&T's logic. They've consistently made more money (80% more revenue compared to Q4 2007) from wireless data, yet on average, AT&T has spent less each quarter for network improvements.

So where has all of that extra money gone? No one can argue that it's the recession sucking up the dollars, because AT&T's profits have remained pretty stable during the whole thing. The money obviously hasn't been spent on network improvements. Perhaps AT&T is fighting Verizon ads with the extra cash?

One thing is certain, the company is not serving AT&T customers in the best manner possible. With rumors that the iPhone may soon be available on Verizon's network as well, AT&T needs to put the pedal to the floor and come through with something... anything.

Update: Early on the morning of 12/21, I received an email from Seth -- he's handling some of AT&T's public relations. It looks like the figures we reported here, while accurate, don't actually cover the whole story. He states that AT&T is actually working very hard on wireless network upgrades. The numbers we used to draw our conclusions covered a lot of aspects of AT&T's spending and not just upgrades. While AT&T won't give out a specific outline of their upgrade budget, they've spent $17 or $18 billion on network upgrades this year.

Let me just say that I've been pleasantly surprised with the reliability of Denver's service since they finished the upgrades in October. I had been dropping calls several times a week prior to the upgrades. Since the end of October, I have yet to drop a call. Obviously, the user experience varies from city to city and we understand that some cities are really struggling. If this upgrade trend continues, hopefully we'll be seeing more cities follow Denver's lead sooner rather than later. I'll let you read through his bullet points instead of re-hashing it for you.

In direct contrast to your headline, we are working very hard on network upgrades. Here's a look at how we're spending what's expected to be between $17 and $18 billion in improvements in 2009 to our wireline and wireless networks, with billions on wireless:

• We are nearly doubling the wireless spectrum serving 3G customers in hundreds of markets across the country, using high-quality 850 MHz spectrum. This additional spectrum expands overall network capacity and improves in-building reception.
• We are adding about 2,000 new cell sites to our network in 2009, expanding service to new cities and improving coverage in other areas.
• We're adding about 100,000 new backhaul connections, which add critical capacity between cell sites and the global IP backbone network.
• We're enabling widespread access to our Wi-Fi network – the largest in the country with more than 20,000 hotspots in all 50 states – allowing customers to take advantage of the best available AT&T mobile broadband connection.
• We're rolling out even faster 3G speeds with deployment of HSPA 7.2 technology and are preparing for field trials of next generation, LTE wireless networks next year, with deployment planning to begin in 2011. This schedule aligns with industry expectations for when a wide variety of compatible 4G wireless devices should be available.

Let us know what you think about this, and what your coverage is like, the comments.

Update: As several of our commenters pointed out, the OS is probably running the fsck utility in the background to repair directory problems, while showing the progress bar to the end user so they know there's something going on (fsck can take quite a while). Here's an older Apple support article that explains the disk repair process very well. We will update you if we find a support article with more information.

Here's a story for anyone who's come across an unusual progress bar during boot and my best guess at what it really is. The moral of my story: backup frequently and try not to turn off your Mac while it is starting up.

Five days ago, I was prepping my late 2008 MacBook Pro for resale when I encountered the ever-spinning gear at boot. Ridiculously enough, I hadn't kept up any of my backups in a month and I hard powered off the machine while it was booting because I forgot to select the boot drive (yes -- I'm a technician and I did something dumb -- I know). Many thoughts went through my head: I've lost the last month's worth of work, I have to waste hours trying to recover data from my drive, why did this have to happen while I was trying to back it up? It goes to show that it can happen to anyone at any time and that the only real solution is to keep a current backup (if not several) of all your information.

Now for a quick word on backups. I usually keep a continuous Time Machine backup of everything and clone my internal drive every couple weeks. The cloned drive is kept in a fireproof safe here in my house. Also, as much as I love Time Machine, in my profession, I've seen several instances where Time Machine backups don't restore properly. I always suggest having a manual clone as a backup to your backup.

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We're sure this will be a hit for the holiday season: Apple recently updated one of the iPhone support articles, explaining how you can continue using an iPhone as a quasi-iPod touch, if you no longer have a cellphone contract with your carrier. Let's give an example:

Your iPhone 3G contract was eligible for the upgrade pricing not too long ago, so you purchased an iPhone 3GS. You have your old iPhone 3G lying around the house with no purpose. Obviously, you could try and sell it... but maybe your child has been begging you for an iPod touch for Christmas. Apple wants to see these devices be re-used and not thrown into the trash, so they've outlined how to activate your iPhone (1st gen, 3G or 3GS) in the article.

It all boils down to this: never get rid of your SIM card. For the iPhone 1st generation, you have to keep the original SIM card in place at all times. Without this, it will not activate in the next software update. The iPhone 3G and 3GS do not need a SIM card installed for day-to-day use. However, you still need a SIM card for the required activation after a software update.

This differs a bit from the iPhone 1st generation: with the iPhone 3G and 3GS you can use any SIM card from your authorized carrier. Either way, it's silly not to leave the SIM card in each generation of iPhone as long as you don't need the SIM card for your new phone. Now you won't get stuck at the "Connect to iTunes" screen forever.

My wife is probably one of the biggest Grinch fans out there. Yes, we have Grinch holiday decorations and end up watching the movies several times throughout the holiday season. We're sitting at 3 times already... I'm praying we don't pass 5. It's not that I don't like The Grinch -- the animated or Jim Carrey version -- I'm usually not a multiple viewing kind of guy.

To help fuel her love -- or obsession -- the folks over at Oceanhouse Media have partnered with Dr. Seuss Enterprises to fill our holiday minds with the Grinch. The first app in the iTunes App Store is called "Grinchmas" [iTunes Link]. It's a simple game where you choose to be a mean or a merry Grinch. I, of course, chose to be mean the first time around... I found myself throwing snowballs at noisy houses with a goal of keeping the noise meter from reaching its max. Next, I tried the merry side: I was given presents and a timer and challenged to toss the most presents before the time ran out. It was a fun little game, good for true Grinch fans and a quick time waster but it's definitely not something that you're gonna play for hours on end.

They also created a pretty cool camera application that has a lot of pre-made greeting cards that you can email to your friends and family (the pic on this post is an example). It's called "Dr. Seuss Camera - The Grinch Edition" [iTunes Link] and is pretty awesome for sending fun cards to your friends. Unfortunately it's nearly impossible to line up the picture with the backgrounds if you're doing them yourself. It would have been nice of them to allow zoom and give you the ability to move your face to the correct spot: without that, you're pretty much limited to taking pictures of other people and sending them to your friends. My wife and I still had fun going through the different pictures and getting her to pose for the cards.

For those of you who have yet to be Grinch'd, Oceanhouse Media also has produced a visually stimulating e-book (it does the original justice) to go along with the Grinch-themed holidays. "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" [iTunes Link] is an interactive e-book that not only reads to you but plays sounds depending on what you touch on the screen. This is a great way to share a holiday classic with your kids. Read them the book, then let them play with the other two apps for a Grinch-tastic holiday. Don't forget to snag the movies too. My wife made me say that.

Did Apple's purchase of music streaming service Lala cost the company $80 million, or 17 million? Probably the latter, at least according to Techcrunch. $80 million seemed like an awfully large price tag for a service that's only a couple years old. Michael Arrington at TC claims to have sources who say the purchase price was $17 million instead of the previously reported $80 million. He also explains that the sources aren't directly related to the purchase, they just have some mysterious knowledge of the situation.

Good source or not, the math makes more sense after reading into it a little bit more. Lala itself was valued at about $180 million but so far has only gathered $35 million in investments. With the theoretical purchase price of 40 to 50 cents per dollar, it could look like $80 million is a viable purchase price... but then you have to take into account that the company only raised $35 million in venture capital. Would Apple really pay more than double the company's total even if the valuation is much higher? If you take in the probability that Apple paid 40 to 50 cents per dollar on the $35 million, that would give you the $17 million figure pretty easily.

It's all up to speculation at this point: the price and the purpose. Some say that Apple doesn't give a rip about the actual streaming service, but that they really purchased it for the engineers behind the project. Others are getting excited to see what music streaming would mean to Apple and iTunes. I'd encourage you to leave your hope where it is... the possibility of a music streaming package on iTunes seems a little weak. However, we've been surprised before. Either way, the $17 million purchase price would make it a steal of a deal considering that Lala supposedly had $14 million in the bank. If Apple is allowed to retain Lala's deal with Google (search results and streaming for titles of popular songs), it would make that $3 million investment look pretty good.

Most aspiring musicians, at least those of us who are computer nerds, have spent time recording their music to distribute it digitally ... to Grandma. Most of us pass GarageBand with flying colors, graduate from Logic Express and eventually get a masters in Logic Pro. I'm admittedly in the learning stages of Logic Pro. I've graduated from my analog mixer and have just begun to learn the real world of DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations). Please keep in mind that I'm admittedly not a sound engineer, just a musician who likes to dabble with audio recording.

Recently, we were contacted by the awesome folks at Cakewalk who asked us if we'd like to review the V-Studio 100. I jumped at the chance to test it out and was pleasantly surprised at how versatile it really was. For the last two weeks, I've learned the hardware and software included in this package that helps you sound good: the end goal of any musician. I'll just do a brief overview of what's included because there's a lot there and the conclusion is that it's a winner. It's a lot to learn, especially if you're not familiar with the software or DAW controllers for that matter, but it's a huge step up from my analog mixer. Hit the read link to learn about its abilities.

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I had the opportunity to speak with the creators of Checkout: an excellent Point of Sale application for the Mac. I've been working with the app for several weeks now and have been thoroughly impressed by it, especially after the developers shared their perspectives. Many thanks to Ed and Dirk for walking me through it.

Whether you're starting a new store or transferring your current system to Checkout, it's the best Point of Sale I've worked with in my many years of retail. The creators explained that they designed Checkout to help small and mid-sized retail stores make sales, print receipts, manage stock, organize customers, and collect payments.

This application focuses heavily on ease-of-use in everything from installation to managing metrics and allows the user to remove "unneeded complexities" from the system they work with every day.

Read on for a full walk-through of the application.

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Last week we covered the possibility that the iPhone would get a hybrid chip allowing it to work on CDMA and UTMS carriers (like Verzion and AT&T) simultaneously. Today, Appleinsider is citing industry analyst Ashok Kumar who says that such a chip hasn't reached field trial status, and that the lead time required for this type of device makes him think consumers won't see it in 2010. Kumar goes on to suggest that this new "worldmode" chip would be more likely to show up in 2011.

While it would be ideal for Apple to have one model of iPhone that would work on nearly all wireless providers in the world, the technology just doesn't appear to be there at this point. Kumar points out that even though the hardware is in development, the software necessary for the basebands of such devices doesn't even exist yet but would get there eventually.

So that's one vote against a 2010 debut for the Verizon iPhone, despite the corroborating rumors from other supply chain analysts. As eager as everyone is for an alternative to AT&T in the USA, I don't think this is the last we'll hear of the story.

On the boxee blog this morning, Avner Ronen announced a new and exciting partnership with an undisclosed consumer electronics company that will result in a dedicated device for users who want to use Boxee as a home theater system.

They were quick to say that they're still looking to develop Boxee for every possible device connected to your TV... computers, game consoles, set-top boxes, they want to be the media software for your device of choice (like the Apple TV).

However, I have to say that this isn't surprising. It's easier and quicker to develop an awesome application on the hardware of your chosing: any Apple fan knows that. This presents a new dilemma for Mac users who want to see Boxee on their computer or Apple TV -- you can't devote an equal amount of time to development when you add another device into the mix.

That said, Boxee development hasn't exactly been the quickest process to begin with, and the service has been in alpha for quite some time. So, this may be a good way for Boxee to get out of alpha and into something that will show its true potential.