Man, I remember the days when the Windows crowd were
constantly saying that Apple was about to go out of business any
moment. I also remember some claiming that after Outspoken was
discontinued, there would never be a way for a blind person to use a
Mac. It's funny what a few years can do.
Take Care
John D. Panarese
Managing Director
Technologies for the Visually Impaired, Inc.
9 Nolan Court
Hauppauge, NY 11788
Tel/Fax, (631) 724-4479
Email, [EMAIL PROTECTED] net
Internet, http://www.tvi-web.com
AUTHORIZED DISTRIBUTORS FOR PORTSET SYSTEMS LTD, COMPSOLUTIONS VA,
PREMIER ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGIES, INDEX, PAPENMEIER, REPRO-TRONICS,
DUXBURY, DANCING DOTS AND OTHER PRODUCTS FOR THE BLIND AND VISUALLY
IMPAIRED
AUTHORIZED APPLE BUSINESS ASSOCIATE
MAC VOICEOVER TRAINING AND SALES
On Sep 24, 2006, at 9:44 AM, Access Curmudgeon wrote:
I hate to encourage uninformed Apple bashing, there is plenty of that
in the mainstream, but in the interests of fairness I think there are
two points of merit, which I will get to in a moment. First I think
it is worth putting the regular detractors, like John Dvorak, into
perspective. David Pogue this week had a good article that gives a
nice overview of how bad things were for Apple:
When Apple Hit Bottom, 20 Sept.
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=141
When Apple was a startup, it was a darling. But by 1996, ten years
ago, the conventional wisdom was solidly against them. It was popular
to predict there doom, because it seemed so obvious. Some of the so
called industry pundits hate having been proved so wrong and resent
Apple for still being around. Most people who still bash Apple are
merely parroting issues from ten years ago. Apple disappointed more
than a few of their core fans, myself included, and some are still
resentful.
How many of you care enough to have written Steve Jobs?
This is the first point I want to concede. I believe that the
detractors were sufficiently vocal and eloquent that I credit them for
the fact that VoiceOver was included in the WWDC keynote. I thank you
for that.
But at this point Apple has demonstrated good faith commitment to
accessibility. Further defamation, at least until Leopard ships
(probably January 8th), just demonstrates that the complainer is not
reasonable, and is not likely to ever be satisfied.
The second point I want to concede is that is not quote okay unquote
that iTunes remains inaccessible. Because MS Office is not VoiceOver
compatible (not Apple's fault) most VO users cannot hope to use a Mac
at work. Clearly, for the blind, the Mac is targeted for use at home.
The consumer market is Apple's strength in the mainstream, so no
problem there. But part of the appeal of a Mac is iLife. It is quite
disappointing that no part of iLife is accessible to VoiceOver users.
That said, because iTunes is so tied to the iPod and the iTunes Store,
and because that triumvirate is so important to Apple as a profit
center, it is quote understandable unquote why iTunes accessibility
has gotten sidetracked.
There is NO reason we should wait until the next
version of the Mac OS to see any improvements.
We have seen some improvements, but unfortunately, a few new bugs too.
There are, of course, huge legitimate reasons why we would have to
wait until the next major version of the OS to see major improvements
When Tiger was new so many of you blasted me saying,
"what do you expect for 6 months, or 9 months". Well
we are now at a bloody 18 months,
If you know anything about software development, you will know that
two years is a pretty aggressive development cycle for major upgrades.
Did you expect VoiceOver to change as much between Tiger patches as
it did during the Public Beta?
and still have not seen any progress.
How much progress has there really been between 10.4(.0) and 10.4.7?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303771
Real sitting-on-the-edge-of-your-seat stuff there.
How many updates have there been in that time for
iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, and other components of the OS.
For iMovie and iDVD, which required an initial purchase and a paid
upgrade for significant changes, there has been exactly one update of
significance (iLife 2005 edition to iLife 2006). I already mentioned
iTunes. Yes, the OS has been patched seven times, but surely you
understand that the majority of OS components have not been patched
seven times?
