Chris Gonzales agrees with Shawn about the iOS world being empowered by apps:

The iPad started looking more and like a suitable and legitimate replacement for a laptop, although admittedly, it couldn't have gotten there without the help of the App Store.

I’m reminded of a line from the Egg Freckles piece I just linked to:

The Windows [app] Store is void of choice and polish. Most entries appear to be experiments in Microsoft’s latest development framework. Most iOS developers benefited from years of Objective-C Mac programming experience before releasing their first iOS apps. With the release of the Surface RT, even veteran Windows developers need to tackle an entirely new application development framework, and it shows.

Boy, it does show.

Shawn Blanc writes a fantastic article, which (annoyingly) nails a point I always find difficult to explain when discussing the way I work to others: It’s all about apps. Shawn can get his work done with just an iPad. But it wasn’t always like that:

When the iPad was new, many of us had ambitions of one day leaving our MacBook Pros at home and traveling only with our iPads. But, at least for me, that idea quickly faded away as I ran head-on into the fact that I just couldn’t get a lot of the work done on my iPad that I needed to do. The iPad was by no means useless, it just wasn’t the laptop replacement I wanted it to be.

But that was nearly three years ago. And, like I said, a lot has changed.

The solution? Apps.

I too was an early adopter of the iPad, picking up the first generation device on impulse in June 2010. Whilst I probably could work entirely using nothing else, I would rather use what I feel most appropriate: for me, that’s OS X.

To me, iOS is more fun to use than OS X — although that gap is rapidly shrinking. My iOS devices are my “treats”, once I’ve done some serious work on the Mac.

I do not disagree with Shawn Blanc about many things, but this specific line from a recent article of his made me stop in my tracks:

Voting is an immeasurable privilege and honor.

No. Voting is not either of these things in the US. It's a right.

The only case you could give for voting being a privilege is when comparing the US to a country without voting — in that case, it is certainly an improvement; a privilege in comparison. But an honour? More of a duty, if anything.

I'm sure getting carried away in the moment and feeling like voting was making a difference may have spurred Shawn to exaggerate a little with his words, which is understandable. I am not trying to speak for him, however. That would be unwise and unfair.

I always want to hear feedback and criticism when I write anything — especially anything controversial — and I hope I'm not offending anyone by pointing this out.

We should all be careful when discussing voting and placing too much trust and power in the hands of government.

I've recently been reading some Thomas Jefferson quotes and I feel this line of his is appropriate:

“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.”