One of my favourite features of Windows Phone 8 is the way tiles on the home screens of devices can be resized to show more or less information. This allows a user to increase the size of an app's tile (or icon) like Mail, in order to see new email messages right on the home screen of the phone, rather than having to launch the app.

iOS doesn't support widgets. For the most part, I think that's a good thing; widgets on Android can very quickly make the entire UI extremely ugly. However Max Rudberg, a great designer, has come up with a cool concept for how icons on iOS could become resizable in order to show more information than just an icon and allow easy access of common tasks without having to launch the app.

There is certainly a risk with a concept like this: how quickly could a device become ugly? What would be the performance cost of doing this? Would iOS start to feel slower because these "mini-apps" are running?

There are difficult design challenges, too: app icons on iPhone aren't the same size as app icons on iPad. This means the "widget" sizes across devices wouldn't be equal. Non-equal widget sizes for iPhone and iPad leads to more work for app developers and designers. With widgets enabled, the iPhone might lose the sense of simplicity it is otherwise known for.

There are certainly compelling reasons for widgets like the ones shown in Max's video. Being able to quickly turn on and off alarms from the clock app would be extremely useful.

It may make sense for just Apple's own apps to have this feature at first — they would be tastefully designed and a great example for how other developers could use larger real estate on the home screen. Eventually, all apps could implement the feature — however it may well have a separate review process to ensure the implementation is not ugly or slow. This could solve the "ugly" problem. Perhaps the complexity problem would solve itself: only users who knew how to increase an app's icon would ever see these widgets. That would keep the iPhone looking simple and beautiful for most people, like it is today.

Perhaps this concept could be implemented, after all. I'm not holding my breath, though. So far, the biggest deviation from a grid of rounded rectangular icons on iOS is in Notification Centre. Perhaps we're more likely to see a feature like resizable UI elements there.

Here's my interview from earlier this week with James Brooks. This is one of my first ever interview experiences and it was great: really fun to do and I'm proud of the result. I'm glad it wasn't too long-winded — I felt the questions were just the right length for me to answer fully, without rambling.

Read on to see what my desk looks like after it's been tidied (it's normally awful) and learn how I feel about flying.

Microsoft has taken a major leap of faith and decided to manufacture its own hardware, the Microsoft Surface for Windows RT¹. Now the Surface is out, it seems Microsoft's traditional hardware partners — in this case Acer — are questioning whether it's worth making devices for Windows RT.

If Microsoft is making its own hardware, isn't it more likely to try and push those devices at stores (and obviously online), rather than those made by partners?

Of course, Microsoft wins whether a customer buys a Surface or an Acer-branded tablet running Windows RT: but how many people will buy a Surface instead of a device made by one of Microsoft's hardware partners? That's the question these companies will be asking themselves, and it seems Acer has made its choice clear:

"Originally we had a very aggressive plan to come out very early next year but because of Surface, our R&D development doesn't stop, but we are much more cautious," Acer President Jim Wong told Reuters on Tuesday.

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1: Catchy.

I suck at sleeping, and I suck at getting up when I have to:

I want to stop going to bed at ridiculous hours in the early morning. I want to get up after a reasonable (but not excessive) amount of sleep and feel great, and I don’t want to put much effort into doing it. I feel I’m not alone in this quest: nerds, designers and technology enthusiasts often fall victim to bad sleep patterns. I tried to take a few very easy steps to improve my own sleep quality, with the intention of sharing it here for you guys to enjoy too. I think I’ve succeeded.

Here's my article for The Industry, where I share a few simple tips whcih have helped me sleep better and wake up easier. I think they'll help you, too.

Of course, I'm not a scientist, but I can give you my word that these are worth trying if you suffer from sleep issues. Seriously.

Scott Forstall has left Apple. Gruber's entire piece about the departure is worth reading; as ever, it contains smart points. This part resonates with me the most:

No one is more excited than I am to see Jony Ive’s design taste spread to Apple’s software, but under Forstall’s leadership, iOS has been an unprecedented success.

We got to where we are today at least partially thanks to Forstall. Now he's gone. Will the rest of the team be able to take us further?

Other questions and points:

• Forstall was pushed out; he didn't decide to quit on his own. This is important because it's the biggest shake up since Tim Cook became CEO.

• How will the design aesthetic behind iOS change now Jony Ive is at the helm? I have great hopes that it'll become more like Safari and less like Find My Friends. I believe this is a good thing.

• How much was this to do with Maps? How much was politics?

Welcome to Tim Cook's Apple, ladies and gentlemen.

It's easy to forget just how important the iPhone is to Apple's business. Nick Wingfield writes a great(and not too long) piece for the New York Times, giving a quick "state of Apple" and update showing where the company is today. This is my favourite section:

Underscoring how drastically Apple’s business has been transformed by mobile products, revenue from the iPhone rose 56 percent to $17.13 billion, making up 48 percent of the company’s total revenue.

Firstly, revenue from the iPhone rose 56%, year over year? Holy shit.

Secondly, the iPhone is 48% of Apple's total revenue? That's a lot.

I'd suggest that data point alone is almost enough of a reason to suggest Apple will be eager to release completely new products; perhaps they can decrease the importance of the iPhone to their business. One wrong move with the iPhone, and 48% of their entire business could suffer.

Releasing something completely new could knock the iPhone's revenue slice down to a more manageable amount, whereby less growth wouldn't effect Apple as significantly as it would today.

From Saturday's piece:

Short of revealing that unicorns are real and you can all have one for a nickel, there’s really no way Apple can make everyone happy at these announcements. What matters is sales, and the Macalope fully expects the iPad mini to sell quite briskly without making the huge margin sacrifices Apple’s competitors have had to make. That’s good for Apple customers and for Apple, no matter what you might hear.

As usual, The Macalope nails it. I highly reccomend subscribing to its feed.

Apple seems to have made a sensible move with the iPad mini, which I can't see being a failure. Making the entry-level iPad notably cheaper is an incredibly wise move, and being able to do so without sacrificing quality, performance or profit margins is a sign of a healthy company.

Marco recently visited a Microsoft Store and played with the new Surface. I wish there was a Microsoft Store I could visit nearby, because I know exactly what he means about Microsoft operating in “an alternate universe” and would love to judge it for myself. I want to play with a Surface and Type Cover to really get a feel for the hardware, too. Finding out if my expectations are accurate would be enlightening.

Marco's entire piece is worth a read, but what stood out to me was the way in which he neatly characterised the differences between Apple and Microsoft, with regards to their views on products and control:

Apple’s products say, “You can’t do that because we think it would suck.”

Microsoft’s products say, “We’ll let you try to do anything on anything if you really want to, even if it sucks.”

Apple has the balls to say no. Sometimes it's difficult, sometimes they take shit for it and sometimes they're plain wrong. But not often. Remember Flash?

US Library of Congress:

The Library of Congress has acquired the personal papers of American astronomer, astrobiologist and science communicator Carl Sagan (1934-1996).

The Sagan collection has come to the Library through the generosity of writer, producer and director Seth MacFarlane, and is officially designated The Seth MacFarlane Collection of the Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan Archive.

What a thoughtful and charitable gesture. I have great respect for Seth's work and having heard about this donation, I'm now an even bigger fan of his.

Let's hope we can all have access to these papers digitally soon. I'd love to get further insight into the thoughts of Carl Sagan, one of my personal heroes.

That's my kind of politics.

Now, where's the Safari Extension?

Apple legally has to display a notice on its website informing every visitor that in a recent UK trial between Samsung and Apple, it was found Samsung did not copy the iPad.

The way in which Apple has worded the message is perfect; so much so that I'm not going to spoil it by quoting any here.

Whoever wrote this did a fine job: what could have been a mildly humiliating situation was turned into a great tongue-in-cheek insult to one of Apple's biggest rivals.

Bravo.

Pierre Igot writes about the possible risks early adopters may take when buying a new iMac with a Fusion Drive installed:

Do potential buyers of the new technology really need to worry about a higher-than-normal failure rate for the new drives and the fact that, while these failures can be fixed with software, the fix involves erasing the drive?

I don't think it's a bad sign that Apple has released some troubleshooting tips for the Fusion Drive. I'd suggest it might actually a good sign the support page exists so soon.

Even so, the technology behind Fusion Drive is new and should therefore be treated with caution. I'm in the market for an iMac and am now faced with a tough decision: which storage configuration do I choose?

My realistic¹ options are either:

• 1TB, 7200rpm hard drive,
• 1TB Fusion Drive,
• 768GB flash storage.

Unfortunately, pricing for these options hasn't been announced yet, so I'm not working with any solid numbers. I imagine the 768GB flash drive will be prohibitively expensive, leaving me with the choice of "risking" a first generation Fusion Drive or suffering with a slow, spinning hard drive. It strikes me as slightly strange that smaller SSD configurations aren't available—but perhaps the 512GB chips are all reserved for other Macs, or considered insufficient for a desktop computer.

Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised at the cost of the flash storage, but it looks like I'll be going with a 1TB Fusion Drive in December. I hope it really does deliver the best of both worlds.

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1: I don't need more than 1TB of storage, so I'm discounting the 3TB options.