The iPhone 4 was unleashed on the Verizon network earlier this month, and despite some nice extras unavailable on the AT and T iPhone 4, including the ability to use your Verizon iPhone to create and share a wireless mobile hotspot, the sales of the Verizon iPhone have been, by most accounts, underwhelming at best.

You can buy and download games for your click-wheel iPod through the iTunes store – but you have to find them first. Finding iPod games seems nearly impossible; you search and all that comes up is games for the iPhone and iPad, but nothing for your iPod Nano, iPod Video, or iPod Classic clickwheel iPod. That is, unless you know how and where to look in the iTunes store. Here’s what you need to do:

Hugh Hefner announced yesterday that Playboy is coming to the iPad. It may just be a coincidence, but Steve Jobs has always insisted that the the app store and iTunes be squeaky clean, and family friendly, with nothing over what seemed the equivalent of a PG rating, and now the Playboy announcement comes quite literally on the heels of Steve Jobs announcing this week that he will be taking a medical leave of absence.

More and more audio files are showing up on the Internet in WMD format, which means that you need to convert those WMD files to listen to them on your Mac or MP3 player. This is particularly true for audio books, which frequently are downloaded as a WMD file. WMD is a format used by Microsoft’s media software, and unless you want to install the Microsoft software on your Mac in order to play your WMD file on a Mac, you are going to have to convert that WMD file in order to listen to it on your Mac. Fortunately, it’s actually really easy to convert a WMD file to listen it on a Mac, and to create MP3s of the file so that you can listen on your iPod, iPad, or other MP3 player.

Here at TIP we are a broadly Mac shop, and we do love our Apple computers. But that doesn’t mean that they never fail, and recently we learned the hard way that there are some known issues with certain repairs – Mac gotchas, if you will – that will get you every time. Such is the case with having your logic board replaced, which will cause problems for you with Time Machine and iTunes, because it changes your computer’s MAC address, on which Time Machine and iTunes rely to authenticate your computer. The biggest issue we see is that Apple knows about this, and doesn’t warn the customer before swapping out the logic board. A simple warning from Apple before replacing a logic board could save Apple customers hours – days even – of stress, heartache, and futile searching and effort; but Apple doesn’t give their customers that warning. So, we are giving you that warning – here’s our word to the wise.

As we discussed earlier, Consumer Reports has issued a “can’t recommend” warning for the iPhone 4, based on the reception problems. However, in the process of testing the iPhone 4.0 issues, they did find a quick, cheap fix for the problem. It’s not pretty, but apparently it does work.

In a letter posted on the Apple website on Friday, just as everyone was leaving for the long weekend (we’re sure the timing is just coincidence), Apple admits that there is a bonafide Apple iPhone 4 reception problem. Well, sort of. What they really say is that the problem isn’t with the reception, or even with a faulty antenna – it’s with saying you have more bars of reception than you really do. Hrrm… way to shift the blame over to AT and T!

In addition to the new iPhone 4 being announced this week, Apple released a new free update to its web browser, Safari. The new Safari 5, for both Mac and Windows, offers a few new features, but none as interesting – or as controversial – as the new Safari “Reader” view or, if you will, Reader function. The new Safari 5 Reader button instantly strips out nearly everything on the page that isn’t part of the article you are reading – ads, external links, pop-ups – everything – and gives you a view of whatever you are reading that has only the content text, and any attendant images or videos.

The issue of Flash – or rather lack thereof – on the iPhone and iPods (and now the iPad), has long been a source of frustration and consternation for Apple devotees. More and more discontent has spilled into public discussion, with Apple openly taking what some perceive as potshots at Adobe, the makers of Flash, and Adobe, in turn, responding. Now it has erupted into open discussion (ok, attacks), with none less than Steve Jobs openly publishing on the Apple web site his “Thoughts on Flash”, and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen responding in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

From our “We told you so” department, San Mateo County sheriffs have executed a warrant, seizing computers and other items from Gizmodo editor Jason Chen’s residence, following the appearance of a lost secret iPhone 4G prototype both in Gizmodo’s possession, and on their blog, where they fully disclosed Apple’s proprietary prototype. Jason Chen was not arrested, although he was patted down.

By now everyone knows the story: Last week a person who was supposedly Apple engineer Gray Powell supposedly lost what was supposedly an iPhone 4G prototype, in a bar in Redwood City, California (a mere stone’s throw from Apple’s Cupertino headquarters). Then a third-party supposedly found the alleged iPhone 4G test model, and then somehow it got to Gizmodo, where they tested it, disassembled it, pronounced it the real deal, and blogged about it, complete with pictures. Now Apple has sent a demand letter, demanding the unit back. This proves that the story, and the phone, are real. Or does it?

Last month we told you about how Wintek, a main supplier for Apple and Nokia, among others, was poisoning its workers with n-hexane – a toxic chemical used in the screen manufacturing process that is actually banned (meaning that Wintek was using it in violation of the ban – they have since claimed to have ceased all use of n-hexane). Now in an annual report from Apple entitled “Supplier Responsibility: 2010 Progress Report”, Apple admits that not only have workers been poisoned by banned substances in the plants they use, but they have been using child labor, as well.

Google, Apple and Yahoo (as well as Oracle and Applied Materials) this week prevailed against a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request that was seeking to require them to share their workforce data as it relates to race and gender. Under the Freedom of Information Act request, the San Jose Mercury News newspaper wanted to know what percentage of Apple’s, Google’s, and Yahoo’s workforce was African American, what percentage was Hispanic, Asian, caucasion, etc., and what percentage were women. Apple, Google and Yahoo, and Oracle and Applied Materials, claimed that these details were trade secrets, and that their businesses would be negatively impacted if they were forced to reveal this information.

It may be the biggest celebrity breakup of the 2009-2010 season. No, it’s not Brad and Angelina, or Jon and Kate Gosselin. It’s Apple and Google. In a meeting at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters last week, Steve Jobs let loose a no-holds-barred rant against Google and their pretence (at least) of do no evil, culminating in his saying that their “don’t be evil” motto is “a load of crap.” Some observers even claim that what Jobs actually said was that Google’s ‘don’t be evil’ is “bullshit”.

Wal-Mart, Gap, Nike – when you think of companies known to use labor where the work enviroment is dangerous to the workers, these are names that come to mind. But Apple? Nokia?? It’s true – the odds are good that the screen on one or more of your computers or cell phones was manufactured in a plant where workers are routinely exposed to toxic chemicals – where, in fact, workers have died due to exposure to chemicals like n-hexane. This week Chinese workers employed by Taiwanese screen manufacturer Wintek, in Wintek’s east China factory in Jiangsu province, staged a protest over, in part, their allegations that several workers have become paralyzed – and died – due to exposure to n-hexane, a toxic chemical that has been banned, but which Wintek is still using.