Of late, there’s been a rush in the tech industry to rip off Apple. Instead of companies innovating, they’re freaked out at the possibility of being left behind and have therefore decided on a ‘clone and maybe catch up’ mentality. The result: myriad non-Apple iPads, iPhones and MacBook Airs. Oddly, though, one thing many of these companies don’t do is ape Apple’s simple naming conventions. Take, for example, svelte notebooks, now referred to as ‘ultrabooks’. If you want to buy Apple, you get a MacBook Air. Simple. Go Windows, and you’re just as likely to get a PC brand, a possible sub-brand, and then a seemingly random string of numbers and letters, such as the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, the Asus Zenbook UX31, or the Samsung 900X3A.

Perhaps I’ve been using Apple kit too long and my brain has rotted away, but these names don’t strike me as being memorable. They are, of course, a symptom of too much choice. Instead of streamlining output, companies tend to think consumers want an absurdly wide range of choice (spoiler: they don’t—they only think they do), and so provide dozens of alternatives. You end up with something akin to the car industry, where someone will be able to remember the company that makes what they want, and possibly the brand, but that’s it.

There’s evidence that some companies are slowly coming to understand the naming problem, if not the choice one. Samsung’s Galaxy products have reasonably distinct names, even if it’s not obvious which is superior. Does Europa ‘beat’ Apollo or Portal? Apple’s naming conventions may not be perfect, but an iPad 2 is clearly better than an iPad 1, and an iPhone 4S betters a 4, which betters a 3GS (the last of those being Apple’s naming nadir in the iPhone line). But then you nip to the Bada OS page and discover the Wave, Wave525, Wave 533, Wave II, Wave 723, and the Wave 578!

Why does Samsung need six Bada OS devices and 17 Android ones? Why does it feel the need to give them such baffling and unhelpful names? In simplifying the line-up and the names, it would have a better shot at making its devices memorable and less throwaway (although one might argue that’s precisely what Samsung’s going for—throwaway—to keep hardware sales ticking over regularly). It’d also be one aspect of Apple I’d be quite happy to see it—and others—replicate, simply because it makes life easier for consumers.

I write about stuff I know. I’ve been creating websites since the mid-1990s and although web design only accounts for a small proportion of my work these days, I understand the industry, and so I write about it. The same’s more or less true for other areas of design and tech. Sometimes, I find myself outside of my comfort zone, and when that happens, I research like crazy. There’s a good reason for this: I don’t want to look like a dick and, by extension, make the publication I’m writing for look like a dick, thereby making the editor look like a dick, who’ll then hunt me down and kill me with sticks (or, more likely, give me no more work).

A pity a writer for The Street didn’t today have the same kind of mentality and instead presumably had a thought process that roughly went:

• I have a story to write about Apple and flash!
• *googles “Apple and flash”*
• *writes story about Apple and flash, and Flash, confusing flash and Flash in a thoroughly embarrassing way*

A choice quote from the now re-edited article (my emphasis), as (at the time of writing) still live on DAF:

Apple is in talks to buy a flash storage company for mobile products called Anobit Technologies for $400 million to $500 million, Israeli newspaper Calcalist reports. If a deal were to materialize, it would be Apple’s biggest merger since bringing legendary founder Steve Jobs back to the company with NeXT in 1996. For a company that’s relied on inventing and growing internal products to win consumer loyalty, a flash-focused deal could potentially solve an oft cited bother of Apple’s popular iPhone and iPad products – their inability to handle Adobe’s Flash program that allows Web users to view applications, pictures and video.

The original article has since been updated, twice(!), to

reflect difference between flash memory hardware and flash software [sic]

Man, what’s going to happen when the guys and gals at The Street find that Jeff Beck’s Flash is available on iTunes, or that Queen’s Flash is also available? JOURNOPOCALYPSE!

Hat-tippage: @DSHowell and @jayenkai.

The BBC Internet blog reveals the UK version of the iOS iPlayer app now supports 3G and AirPlay.

The app is compatible with Apple AirPlay. If you are running iOS5, you can connect your iPhone or iPod touch to Apple TV and watch your favourite programme on your television.

This also works with the iPad. However, the app uses its own player rather than the default iOS one, and so this means you don’t get an in-app control for toggling AirPlay and firing BBC content at your Apple TV. So here’s a handy cut-out-and-keep* guide for getting AirPlay running using the iPlayer app:

1. Launch BBC iPlayer app;
2. Double-click your home button to bring up the multitasking tray;
3. Swipe this to the right, which should reveal playback controls—on the iPhone, you’ll need to do this a second time, to see the AirPlay button;
4. Tap the AirPlay button (a rectangle with a triangle pointing upwards) and select your desired output device;
5. Play your video.

Kudos to the BBC for finally getting AirPlay working in the UK iPlayer app (it’s been in the non-UK one for a while); here’s hoping that a future update makes activating AirPlay a little easier. Also, here’s hoping the BBC’s rivals realise that they, too, can offer AirPlay—it’s a bit odd that ITV, C4 and LoveFilm are all currently avoiding the tech like it’s a bad smell.

* Assuming you print it. Or chop up your display with really sharp scissors, you nutcase.

Dan Seitz writes a pair of articles for Guyism, showcasing an interesting line of thinking. And by interesting, I mean bonkers. He first tells you what tablets to avoid: BlackBerry’s Playbook (cheap but heading for a write-off); HP’s TouchPad and the Dell Streak 7 (discontinued); Motorola Xoom 2 (underwhelming sales and possible privacy concerns); and—drumroll—the iPad 2.

Now, the Xoom reasoning is a little odd, but the iPad one takes the biscuit and is worth quoting in full:

Why are we recommending you not bother with this one? Because the iPad 3 is inevitable next year, and there might even be two of them. It’s not worth $500 for a device that will be obsolete in three to five months.

Obsolete is a very loaded term, and it suggests a device is worthless. Claiming the iPad 2 will be obsolete when the iPad 3 appears is ludicrous.

So, what should we be buying? Which tablets aren’t “sinking like rocks”, according to Seitz? In his follow-up, he mentions three. For the business traveler/heavy laptop user, the Asus Transformer Prime, because Android tablets are never rapidly superseded, right?

[For] $50 more than the best iPad, you get a lot more for your money.

Essentially, for $750, you have a blazingly fast laptop and insanely quick tablet in one package. The Prime has a quad-core processor, faster than any other tablet on the market, more space that any tablet at its price point, and a better design. Even better, it’s got microSD and microHDMI support right out of the box, meaning you can expand it if you need to.

Sounds like a bullet-point checklist from the days of tech specs.

And for casual users and non-techies? Seitz hates the iPad, so I would have thought he’d mention the Kindle Fire. But he moans about “ongoing WiFi problems” and ends up recommending the Nook Color eReader and Nook Tablet, respectively.

Sometimes there just aren’t the words.

Angry Chickens is blasting its way to the top of the App Store charts, proving once again that one path to iOS gaming riches is:

• Create run-of-the-mill game with plenty of pay-off
• Include birds
• Make birds cute
• Polish game until it squeaks

Whether or not you bother with the fourth of those will depend on whether you want your game to be dismissed immediately or bob about in the charts for months.

But Angry Chickens has drawn ire, because it’s such a rip-off of Angry Birds, except, you know, it isn’t. Yes, it involves irritating cartoon birds and also has a title quite clearly designed to confuse people. And, yes, it has physics-oriented destruction-based gameplay. But Angry Chickens is actually a rip-off of Siege Hero, which is a 3D version of Angry Birds, which is a clone of Crush the Castle, an artillery game by the Siege Hero guys, which itself is effectively an online (now also iOS) and advanced take on ancient Apple II game Artillery, which was probably based on a BASIC game also called Artillery.

Clear?