I actually attended this session and bailed out part way through. It was just too painful to hear the Mac guy struggle along. The assumption was that each platform operator was very familiar with their technology and the Apple guy obviously was not. I know the Jaws guy is an expert and the Orca guy was one of the developers of that screen reader. When I left the Apple guy was still trying to figure out how to launch Safari. He was trying to do it by searching his hard drive with Spotlight. I guess that would work but I think it's far easier to pull up the application list with Apple-shift-A, type S A to get to Safari and then Apple-O to open it. These aren't even Voiceover related commands. I did ping the Apple guy who was outside the room as I left about how sad the VO showing was in there. He said he had talked to the presenter (who claimed to know several platforms) and the presenter assured him he was pretty familiar. He also thought that VO and the Mac was a strong enough product that it would still succeed.

A nice positive viewpoint, but for anyone listening to the presenter struggle to do the most basic things it really sounded bad. On a positive note I also went to the Apple VoiceOver intro and heard a lot of positive feedback from folks. It was a bit errie to hear 50 voiceover sessions in a room all reading stuff at the same time since the headphones had not arrived yet.

I also got to meet Josh De Lioncourt in person, who was there as an invited expert to help answer questions. That would make anybody's day :)

CB

Justin Harford wrote:
Hello

I have listened to the discussion. It was sort of painful to listen to on the mac side of things. In the past I have been critical of the apple OS mainly when leopard came out, but mistakes made here could easily have been fixed more effectively than they were. I guess all I can say here is that it hurts to think that other blind users struggle this much with their computers.

Please tell me it's not like this with everyone here.

Regards
Justin Harford

Into this wild abyss, the weary fiend stood on the brink of hell and looked awhile, pondering his voyage

John Milton
Paradise Lost

On Mar 19, 2008, at 2:39 PM, David Poehlman wrote:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jamal Mazrui" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 6:17 PM
Subject: [UACCESS-L] Audio of Dueling Operating Systems at CSUN 2008
available


-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Mika Pyyhkala [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 5:02 PM
To: Jamal Mazrui
Subject: CSUN 2008 Conference MP3 Presentation, Dueling Operating Systems,
BLV-1002

Please find a link below to the blog text and audio for this presentation.
The file is 1 hour and 52 minutes long, and about 52MB in size:
http://dcnightout.com/?p=137

I can add additional text or links to the blog entry if you like, e.g.
to the products used, to the presenters, other related entities, or
related resources.

The recording was made using an Olympus DS50 recorder, and has been saved as a mono MP3 file. I have reviewed the beginning and select parts of the
recording but have not reviewed the entire contents.

In the presentation, an Apple Macintosh Voiceover, Orca Linux, and Jaws
For Windows user complete identical tasks using their assistive and
mainstream technologies.  The presentation highlights the strengths and
weaknesses of each operating system, related assistive technologies, and
individual user experiences.

Enjoy,

Mika
Direct Link To MP3:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/dcnightout/DCNO_14MAR2008.mp3

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