I finally took the plunge and bought the low-end Mac Mini. First, 2 quick
questions... Is there a way to get vo to read the entire contents of a
dialog box like hitting Insert+b in jaws? Also, can I get it to say the
title of a data entry field?
I am still in the setup program and when I press the continue button, it
goes to the next dialog box but it doesn't read the box. You know what I
mean? You press the continue button after entering whatever data it's asking
for and it goes to the next data entry screen but it doesn't say anything.
So I've been pressing tab and then shift+tab to get it to read the title of
the data entry field. But I would guess there's more text in the dialog box
than just the titles of the data entry fields.
On to my story. You may or may not find this interesting. I'm not
complaining. I'm just telling my story. Well, maybe I'm complaining a little
bit. But I haven't even gotten though the setup program yet so I'm sure I'll
have lots of positive things to say once I get going.
I bought the low-end Mac Mini last week Thursday. I'm not even through the
set up yet. But a big part of the reason for that is that I opened the box
at work last Thursday and took out the pieces. And then I couldn't get them
back in the box and accidently left the power brick in my office. So Friday
I stuffed the brick into my backpack and when I got home, I discovered that
I had also left the power chord extension in my office. So then I couldn't
do anything all weekend either. It's an extremely minor complaint but Apple
should have made that chord a standard power chord.
Another minor complaint is that I had to take a printer/scanner/copier along
with my Mac. I'd have rather they'd taken $50 off the price.
I took Monday off work so I couldn't pick up the power chord until Tuesday.
Tuesday night I got the thing powered up but then I couldn't get it to talk.
Maybe I didn't wait long enough for it to boot but I wasn't getting any
speech. I started pressing keys hoping to remember the hotkey for starting
voiceover. I finally got on my Windows PC and googled for it. Command+F5. It
started talking but in French or German. I dunno. I putzed around with that
for a while and then turned it off.
Wednesday I turned it back on and it came up speaking in English. But it
didn't seem to want to do anything. I have a standard USB keyboard and I
thought maybe I needed an Apple keyboard. I was told my standard keyboard
should work I was listening to the Apple tutorial on voiceover on my Windows
PC but none of the keys did what it said they would.
Thursday, I borrowed a bluetooth Mac keyboard from my boss. She told me i'd
probably need sighted assistance to set it up. That may be correct but as it
turns out, the problem I was having was that the Mac wanted to run some kind
of system check probably because I had just cut the power to the thing the
day before. That's my theory anyway. I pressed enter, it played some funky
music, obviously was running some program, and then came up speaking
English. In fact, it asked me which language I wanted. So the first time, I
must have accidently selected another language. I can't explain it but I
sure didn't hear it ask me that the first time. This time I selected English
and was able to get through several pages of the setup procedure. As I
mentioned, my problem right now is that I am a bit uncertain of what it's
asking me because I don't know how to get it to read all of the instructions
in the dialog boxes.
For example, it asked me for my email address but it doesn't seem to like
what I've entered. It's asking for my mac.com email address and I don't know
what that is.
- Finally took the plunge John Heim
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