Dear flute subreddit,

I'm not a real flute player, but I always liked to fool around with bamboo flutes. But recently I bought Yamaha fife (YRF-21) on Amazon, and now I am somewhat perplexed. In bamboo flutes the hole always has sharp edges, while in this fife the edges are super-smooth. Is it good at all? Is it on purpose? I have to blow so much harder into the fife to make it sound, and I can hardly produce any overtones...

So basically I have three different questions:

1. Is there any benefit in the hole of the Yamaha fife being so smooth?

2. When I have problems playing it, is it because it is objectively harder to play it than an average bamboo flute, or because I need to change my embouchure in some way?

3. When teaching kids, do people use bamboo flutes at all, as an intermediate step between a recorder and a flute? Or are they considered too folk / non-chromatic to even try?

Thank you, and sorry for somewhat vague questions!