iPad: recommended age 12 and below

    With Black Friday rapidly approaching, parents may want to get up early Friday morning to find deals, as a recent survey shows their kids are eyeing some wallet-stretching electronics this holiday season.

    Across a multitude of electronic offerings, the Apple iPad leads all devices (31% interest in future purchase) among American kids ages 6-12. Apple’s iPod Touch is also popular choice among kids, generating similar levels of interest as computers.

    However kids above 13 and teenagers are far less interested in Apple devices, as the PC and smartphone are ranked in the top.

Yet another story on unreliable Apple software: Fixing MobileMe

     Apple's never been so great with sync. Nonetheless, the idea of MobileMe is great. In practice, unfortunately like most Apple products and services, it just doesn't work. 

     The way to fix MobileMe can basically be summarized in three words: reset, reset, reset. When you're syncing with a bunch of devices, MobileMe will often have trouble deciding what data to delete and what to keep. It will err on the side of either deleting or keeping everything and no matter how many times you delete address book contacts, calendars, or whatever, you find them popping back up again. This is extremely frustrating as you will have to sync all those 20GB of whatever is on your iPhone all over again - it takes ages...

     So, to make use of those 99$ you paid for this lousy service, let's start resetting your data. First, the MobileMe preference pane in System Preferences is where you want to start, but you also have to reset syncing data in iSync as well. 

If you're syncing to an iOS device, you should also reset sync data on the phone (in Setting-> General-> Reset). 

iPhone users want Flash desperately!

iPhone users don't need Flash, Flash is no longer necessary.

Steve Jobs

     Yet the recently launched Skyfire with flash video support for iPhone has been "sold out".

   The pseudo-Flash-capable browser has just disappeared from iTunes App Stores around the globe, mere hours after its splashy debut. Trying to download it in the United States yields a "request could not be completed" message, and RazorianFly readers are chiming in with reports that the app is no longer available in Greece, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Spain and the UK.

    Skyfire said that the demand for a Flash video workaround is apparently so high that the company's having server issues and decided to pull the app rather than introduce new users to a sub-par experience. Skyfire assures us that it's adding servers as quickly as it can, but didn't provide an ETA on when we might see the app once more.

Apple: Screw GNU/GPL, we just don't care about your Copyright License!

      After four long years of wait the AppsStore is starting to get more than joke programs called "apps". One of the first real software programs available on the AppStore is the VLC media player (VLC and MPlayer were available for Nokia's Maemo/MeeGo platform a few weeks after the launch!).
      Even though there are no decent any codec/any format players on the Appstore and the iPhone has a very limited multimedia support to say the least, the developer wants to yank it, because Apple's "violating GNU public license under which VLC is released by applying DRM to it".

     VLC's lead developer, Rémi Denis-Courmont, said that "it is to be expected that Apple will cease distribution soon," due to the "intransigently tight control Apple maintains over its mobile applications platform."

     Basically, Apple's used of DRM when it distributes the app, where it must be downloaded separately for each individual iOS device (rather than being able to be copied from device to device), doesn't sit happy with the VLC developers, who support the GNU General Public License, or GPL for short—which describes itself as "a free, copyleft license for software and other kinds of works."

It's slightly bizarre, considering the app is free, but you've got to give Denis-Courmont respect for sticking to his guns. He told iLounge that:

[iPhone jokes] At long last!

HTML5 & Flash on the iPad vs. Nexus One & BlackBerry Playbook

iPad put to the test. What follows is the magical experience Apple provides no Flash support at all and shabby HTML5 rendering:

Looks like the iPad barely renders 2D.

iOS 4.2 postponed indefinitley because of iPad WiFi bug

     It looks like Apple's incompetence in designing hardware can only be matched by their inability to code reliable software and the poor build quality of the products made in The Far East (read: Shenzhen, China, new MacBook Air).

     After weeks of slumbering, Apple's iOS update has today gone from "gold" to cancelled as the severe iPad Wi-Fi *leak* has *spilled* over the dev team yet again. How something that was fixed in the first place can break with an "update" is beyond me but, hey!, so is the way they managed to patch a hardware flaw with software.

     Many users of the Golden Master version of 4.2 reported that a WiFi connection could be established by their devices but, once made, they were unable to actually do anything on the 'net, and not being able to do anything on the 'net is what we like to call a Very Bad Thing. No word on exactly when a new version will be available, but it should still drop within the next few weeks. [Edit]It looks like a new beta of the beta version has shown up that is supposed to fix the WiFi flaw; if it doesn't a long wait for iOS 4.3 awaits...

    Please don't come asking how Google manages to roll full OS updates on dozens of feature packed devices with different CPUs at once and Apple can't even manage a few wimpy wannabe smart devices that can't even send a picture through bluetooth, connect to a PC or anything else for that matter...

New MacBook Air falls victim to cheap build quality

    It looks like every new Apple gadget is doomed to failure because of the cheap "Made in China" (Foxconn to be specific) labor, and owners of the new MacBook Air models are no exception. Even if the day of its release started with a software bug, locking up while in iMovie, this wasn't the end of the woes.

    Thanks to a YouTube video, we've seen for ourselves evidence of a display flickering in a most unappealing manner, and we're hearing tales of other display issues, kernel errors that occur when the machines are trying to come out of sleep mode, and more.

   There's not been an official response from Apple yet, we're not sure how widespread the problems are, and we haven't experienced these issues first hand, but we'll let you know as soon as we hear something. Promise. In the meantime, it looks like some of you might have a date with the Genius Bar.

Video after the break.

[iPhone jokes] Truth hurts