I would disagree, I work with kids aged 8-14, and a new shiny phone is an object of fascination and status. They're enamored with the object itself and the interaction therewith. Of course at some point (like all new shiny) it become more about what you do with the phone, but initially that is a secondary attribute.
Also, the article states that Fundizer did the PR work for a 7% cut of whatever funds where raised... Seems disingenuous to back out after Fundizer did their-work unless they paid them 7% of what they would have raised.
A simple comparison of Dom selection vs Jquery selection[1]
When selecting one DIV by id, I'm consistently getting:
DOM - 0.08ish ms
Jquery - 0.2ish ms
I do have an app where every millisecond is critical. For this app I'm using raw dom selectors. However, most of the time, the convenience of jquery selectors outweigh these performance gains.