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Microsoft’s My Documents Folder Makes Triumphant Return – On iPad

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Earlier today, I was reading Infoworld’s article, The iPad questions Apple won’t answer. The first question they listed was “Can you save and transfer documents to the iPad?”, and their assumed answer was “No”; they suggested that the only way to do this would be to open a document from an email message.
I read that [...]

Top 5 Things To Check Out at Macworld 2010

Macworld 2010 opens today. It is the 25th annual gathering of Mac users. That’s right, 25 years!
But thanks to the absence of Apple this year, this “Mecca for Mac Heads” may be the last. So check it out while you can.

The show runs for 5 days. The Expo showfloor opens on Thursday at noon.
For the [...]

Opinion: MacBook, or iMac + iPad?

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The announcement of the iPad has done a lot of things: it’s stoked up excitement in the Mac using community, it’s got a bunch of developers feverishly coding exciting new stuff, and it’s got retailers and cell phone companies the world over drooling over the money they can make from it.
And it’s also somewhat upset [...]

In Depth: 30 Days with the Nexus One

It’s been a month since my review of Google’s “SuperPhone”, the Nexus One. Since that time, we’ve surfed, updated facebook, navigated, called, played endless hands of cribbage and even tried to freeze it to death on a trip to Dayton Ohio. Follow me after the jump to find out does the “SuperPhone” stand the [...]

How Three-Year-Olds Use The App Store

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George Dearing’s three-year-old son got his hands on dad’s iPhone and – oops – found himself staring at the App Store. While it was still logged in to dad’s iTunes account.

So he did what any three-year-old would do in the same position: he went shopping, while dad’s attention was elsewhere. The image above is George’s screenshot of the digital receipt that arrived later on.

As George points out, the lad was attracted by the colors and shapes he saw in icons and screenshots. Which is how a mishmash of stuff like Wheels on the bus, Doodle Jump, and I Am T-Pain ended up as a surprise package of new stuff for George to play with.

(What a great idea for Apple: the Daily Kids Pick! A handful of random apps, as chosen by a random three-year-old given an iPhone for 10 minutes. Only $15!)

George makes a serious point, though: “What kind of message does it send to companies trying to capture attention in crowded app stores?”

Thanks to George for the pic and the story.

About the author

gilest

Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He is a columnist for PA, and has written for the BBC, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, MacUser, Macworld, and The Morning News. He has a blog you can ignore and a Twitter account you needn't follow.

Email the author | Read more posts by Giles Turnbull.

8 comments

    i think developers should make children attracting icons, just incase if a kid got his hands on dad’s iphone with itunes account logged in. i think its a good strategy for making money. i sure would do that if i was a developer : )

    Well, at least the majority were free. Smart kid!

    i know about that i hate putting in my password but
    i wish you had to enter it for transactions everytime.
    my daughter bought like 50 bucks worth of games.
    same age :-)

    i think the key point is ‘don’t let your kids play with your phone without supervision’

    Clearly there are parenting issues when the three year old is buying content rated for 4+… ;)

    What this tells you is that being in the top 100 is really important to being discovered :)

    Lucky for him Apple pulled the ‘I’m Rich’ app from the store.

    LOL@ I am T-Pain

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