Monthly Archives: January 2013

It’s confirmed: Apple sucks!

I long suspected that Apple played dirty, just didn’t know to what extent. Today I got a chance to find out.

An iPad mini came into my possession, so I registered an online “AppleID” account. This required all kinds of contact information, including cell phone number which I provided. Soon after registration I began to receive spam calls and text messages. No, not from Apple, oh no. These came from auto insurances, money making schemes and other such scum. Wherever did they get my number? I have had it for several years and NEVER received any spam until this fateful day.

But this is just a beginning. I decided – to hell with it, I was willing to give Apple a chance and they blew it. So now I wanted to delete my account and all associated data. Surprise! You can’t do this online. At http://appleid.apple.com you can only change some contact info, but that’s about it.

So I called support. They requested my device serial number. That made me really wonder – why? If I want to cancel my Google account – they don’t request my Droid phone s/n. Ditto Amazon & Kindle. So why, Apple, why?

The support agent enlightened me. This is needed so I could be charged for this paid support call! I needed to pay to get information on how to cancel my account.

Well, this is really it. Back to Android. Oh and by the way, I don’t see what’ s the fuss is about. As a tablet iPad is pretty average, it does pretty much what any other tablet on the marked does. A few years ago when it was the only thing – maybe it was something. But now – Apple lost it.

FusionCharts.RenderChart and ASP.NET UpdatePanel

Fusion Charts

FusionCharts is a very cool cross-platform charting library – it offers huge variety of chart types and mind-blowing special effects. It also offers wide variety of chart rendering options both client- and server-side.

One such option is to render chart in an ASP.NET application. FusionCharts.dll that you get with the package offers handy FusionCharts.RenderChart method that generates all the client-side code you need to display a beautiful chart. Usually it is used something like this:

xLabel1.text = FusionCharts.RenderChart("FusionCharts/Pie2D.swf", "", sChartXmlData, sChartID, iChartWidth, iChartHeight, False, True)

where xLabel1 is a Label or Literal control in your ASPX page and FusionCharts.RenderChart is a function that accepts number of parameters, like chart type, chart XML data, dimensions etc.

It works very well until you want to render the chart inside of Microsoft Ajax UpdatePanel – then nothing works. This happens because FusionCharts.RenderChart function emits some HTML along with JavaScript that do not work during partial postback. FusionCharts suggest hooking up to UpdatePanel life-cycle events, but it’s seems like an overkill, and often doesn’t work (especially if you have a complex project, which this hookup can interfere with). But there’s an alternative solution.
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