I agree that you're probably holding the striker too far away. I've noticed this is commonaly a problem with cadets (not to be sexist, but girls seem to have more of a problem with it than boys). The problem there seems to be that they have an unreasonable fear of fire; they seem to think the tinder is going to explode into a fireball and burn their fingers off. Once they realise that the fire is not going to catch so quickly and so strongly as to cause even mild burns, they get up the courage to hold the flint down right on top of the tinder.

I've found my BlastMatch will pretty much ignite a cotton ball straight out of the bag, with no fluffing up necessary, but for other sparkers, especially my "home-made" ones, it's important to have the cotton wool really wispy - you should be able to see through it if you hold it up.

As for the mag-flint, you do need some sort of container so you can collect them into a pile. Just a loose pile about the size of a quarter is good (one poster here said a nickel, it's probably about the same size by eyeballing it). I've tried it a couple of times, I didn't find it particulary onerous a task as long as I had something to catch the flakes in. You do need an intermediate material, like paper or birch bark, to turn those white-hot flakes into a normal flame, just as you would with a match.

Btw, I always find the three words "tinder, kindling, and fuel" to be inadequate to describe the process of firemaking.
As I understand it, "tinder" is the thing that catches the spark - the cotton wool, for example - whereas kindling is the small pieces of wood that are used to ignite progressively larger pieces of wood until the fire is self-sustaining. But what then is the newsprint/birch bark? Is it tinder, or kindling? Maybe I should refer to it as "tindling" ;-) I can't call it "kinder" because that would scandalise any German visitors. <img src="images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> )