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.”

I'm not kidding. This is a really neat idea.

Samsung has definitely got to the party first, here — I can imagine Apple moving further into this space with the iPod Touch in the coming years.

Windows recovery tools take up 5 GB and Windows RT, Office and built in apps take up another 8 GB.

I can't help but feel that when so much space is being used by built-in software, the whole device must feel sluggish and bloated. Judging from some reports, this is an accurate assumption.

Interestingly, 32 GB iPads have 28 GB of usable space. They also don't feel sluggish. Perhaps the slimness of iOS may account for at least part of this?

Considering Microsoft is a software company, this turn of events surprises me. I'd expect the software coming out of Microsoft to be great, and the hardware to be questionable. But it's the other way around.

My buddy Sam has owned an iPad mini for a few days now — and, like many others, is surprised at just how well it fits into her life:

I have said for some time now that games that involve driving, therefore lots of steering, are particularly cumbersome on the full size iPad. The weight not only makes it more difficult to control but your arms feel tired before long. The lightness of the iPad mini means I don’t get aching arms and I’m able to control the tilting action way better.

My iPad is a third generation model: the first with a Retina display. This means I find it relatively heavy and both warmer and more cumbersome than I'd like. Whilst I haven't played with an iPad mini yet, I can see myself preferring its size and weight.

The iPad was launched in early 2010. It's been two and a half years, and now the iPad mini is out.

I feel that in the first two years, the iPad was for geeks and people with a solid amount of disposable income. That's no longer true; the iPad mini is cheaper, lighter, thinner and more importantly still an iPad. The iPad mini is now for everyone.

Superb.

Some great thoughts about design from my pal and fellow writer at The Industry, Gannon Burgett:

Design is human. Design is what connects individuals with the items they interact with on a daily basis.

To riff on another Steve Jobs speech; look around you and realise that all the items making up your life were designed by someone, somewhere. There's no reason why you can't design something else which will change everyone's life, too.

Not everyone will get good design. It's too subjective. Taste plays a huge part in understanding when something is truly great.

I find it more important to be sure of your design taste than to be sure of your skills: it's possible to increase your design skills over time, so long as you have a goal. Taste provides the direction to that goal.

Andrew Hart writes a great piece which makes me proud to be alive today. It reminds me of a similar article I wrote not too long ago:

We tend to accept that humanity has changed at a much faster pace over the past 100-150 years than ever before.

It's incredible. I love science.

A good amount more information has surfaced over at Ars Technica about Apple's new Fusion Drive.

Everything I read in this article sounds like good news. I no longer think there is a particular risk when using the technology, so long as I'm backed up regularly. I'm always backed up regularly, and you should be, too.

I'm surprised that it's possible to hook up external USB or Thunderbolt drives to your Mac and use them combined with an internal drive, as a Fusion Drive. But it's cool that it's possible. This may enable people with older Macs to benefit from the technology.

Furthermore, Fusion Drive works at the block level of the disks, below the file level. This essentially means that if you have a huge file of some kind but only want to regularly access a small part of it, the small part will be moved over to the SSD, but the rest will remain on the regular hard drive. Awesome.

It seems Apple has surprised us again; just like the A6 chip in the iPhone 5, a lot more work has gone into Fusion Drive than we (or at least I) initially assumed. Great stuff.

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.

---

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.