Just upgraded my iPad to iOS5. Not sure what to think yet. I like that Apple has added an embedded ‘to do’ list. I have an app that does that well. The one Apple has added seems inherently easier. Plus, it’s built into the system. However, the upgrade disappeared four of my apps, including a golf game with an addicting ‘closest to the pin’ challenge. I’ll have to get those back. Apple TV has also updated. Did I mention I’m a big fan of Apple TV?

Moments like these, especially with the release of the iPhone 4S tomorrow, always make me cringe. Foot soldiers on both sides crawl into the virtual foxholes and begin firing round after round at one another. This is probably the product of good public relations work on both sides, however, there are enough polarized people with their own invented fury that don’t need prodding from PR laden info bombs and an Apple-biased big media machine. I suppose there’s money to be made doing this.

I owned an iPhone for two years. I loved it. However, for the last six months, I have used an Android-based phone, the HTC Desire HD. The phone itself is FANTASTIC and has a massive, beautiful screen. I love the camera. Accessories are hard to find. Still, a great phone. I switched because I wanted to try the Android experience. It’s been okay. Not fabulous. Just okay. It’s a bit disorganized, and the overall app quality leaves something to be desired. Android crashes more than iOS. There’s more upkeep required. I miss the ease of syncing music. Would I switch to 4S? Probably. It’s just not a part of my technology budget right now and, as mentioned, I do like the HTC phone.

About six months after I bought the Android phone, one of those people who is a bit too polarized against all things Apple asked me to write a review of my Android phone for his website. I declined. I didn’t want to “side” with one camp or the other — and that’s exactly what he wanted. In some circles, that’s called “propaganda.” Writing a review (which he probably wouldn’t have liked) would have done that. I’m a technology centrist and always have been. Plus, he wasn’t paying me.

All that said, to the people people choosing to polarize themselves and stand as rabid foot soldiers for either cause? Unless one or the other is paying you, go find something to do with hunger, disease, homelessness or some other cause that requires as great or more passion. Launch those tirades at real villains instead of fueling somebody else’s profit margin. Find a soup kitchen and dish up a few meals. Go hammer some nails into a habitat for humanity house. Write poetry. Read a child a book. Find a real cause that requires as much or more passion than this. Find something.

That other stuff is boring the rest of us.

There are no great pronouncements about 2010 to be made. And whatever is behind me is behind me. So, there is no sense reflecting upon bells that cannot be unrung. There is also little good in thinking we can cast new bells and move them to the belfry, and have them ringing before the next service.

Adults have this proclivity of marking milestone dates like this with at least the metaphor of change. That is, some statement like, “Even if nothing else around me will suffer or reward from significant change, than I should at least believe that there is the opportunity for massive change in my life and go with it.” That is the flawed sentiment a new year brings.

There is also this idea that a new decade (and more recently, a new millennium) means a new era of some kind and the idea of making predictions. Sort of setting the table for what the next ten years will look, smell and sound like by pronouncing bold things and championing capricious self-made causes. Most that, however, is media bullshit to fill a 24-hour news cycle, to fill magazine columns and keep talk-radio moving.

I prefer to see resolutions from my 4-year-old daughter’s perspective. She has not, as of yet, learned how to tell time. She doesn’t know the difference between January and January Jones. And she’s pretty happy. Further, she did not wake up Jan. 1 proclaiming new visions on attacking going to the bathroom, putting on her clothes or making digital fairies on her computer. She just woke up and wanted cartoons. I did, too.

All the things people have made irrational resolutions about are things they think about during the 364 days that came before the ball dropped and the 364 before the next one will. For instance, I want to be more organized. I’d also like to paint and draw more. I’d like to worry less. A few others as well. I think about them every day.

And yes, I want to lose weight. I also should be nicer and more compassionate to people. But most of those notions have bumped around my head for months if not years, just as they do in yours. It’s not as if sometime around Dec. 15 I had some sort of epiphany. The sun has not shown through the clouds. No voice has spoken. There are no trumpets of St. Gabriel to herald remarkable feats I will accomplish by, say, March.

But there are plenty of you who believe that. You’ll start your weight-loss plan, your stop-smoking plan or your “be kind to others” plan the same day you have the worst hangover of your life. You’ll putz around with the notions for about 18 days, according to averages, and then you’ll quit. It’s not your fault. It’s human nature. As a good friend noted, resolutions are like dating a stripper. Sure, they’re good for a little while, but are you going to get married to them? So, I’ll stick with my 4-year-old’s outlook on this. Sun’s up. I need to eat. I get bored easy. Where’s my chocolate milk?

Adults don’t change. They manage. And if they can manage to to make one significant change over time (sustained weight loss, for instance), that’s pretty good. But stacking the deck with multiple resolutions? That’s like playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded weapon. And when one resolution falls, they’ll all fall and you’re just back at the dining table drowning the lost resolutions in wine.

That said, one my 2010 prediction is this: there will be millions of quiet, failed resolutions. There will be millions of loud, failed resolutions. And there will be few resolutions that meet their intended ends. And those who can actually set a resolution and meet it are probably people who can do that on June 17 or Nov. 2, too. Exceptional people who have the ability, as adults, to make a paradigm change that makes them better.

For most of us, however, we don’t have those skills and believing we do and ensuring success on the same night there are millions of shirtless drunks slobbering on the tarmacs from Seattle to Boston; the same night we take seriously “Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve;” the same night we say something like, “Screw it. I’m gonna get drunk because I’ve earned it” is, at best, naive and, at worst, troubling.

Perhaps, then, resolutions are better left for days of greater clarity. Leisurely days when we can invest time to plan and see the ideas through. Days with families who’ll build support. Days with those few caring friends to act as guides and mentors. Days that have absolutely nothing to do with a meaningless milestone that merely signals another cycle of seasons and the start of someone’s new fiscal year.

We have to go learn how to change before we can change. Anything else is bell ringing for bell-ringing’s sake.

Happy Twenty-Ten.