Well, to be sure, I do think the touchscreen was a step back, but not because of accessibility—well, not as much for accessibility. My primary complaint with touch-screens (or, really, touch-anythings) has been the visualisation of information, which inevitably leads to trivialisation as it needs to fit within a simplistic UI paradigm to appeal. Contemporary example: routers set up and configured using a touchscreen. I still remember with great fondness the old Nokia E51. Yes, it did far less, but it also wasn’t seriously crippled in what it could actually do, because it wasn’t constrained by good looks. Oh yeah, and you could type faster on it, which helped.
I concur with the scepticism, but only because I think the Mac is on its last legs. Think it’s pretty clear that Apple have shown a commitment to solving accessibility problems; it just doesn’t look that way because of the deterioration of OS X. But maybe I have yet to be surprised. My ears are open. On a personal level, I find the idea of making function keys into anything less than keyboard keys a little disconcerting, because those keys are used by applications and other operating systems. Still, let’s see. Here’s a thought for those talking about VoiceOver support for this touch bar thingy: it wouldn’t work under virtualisation, with VO disabled. Are you quite sure that this is what you want? USB-C is fine, really. With the right adaptors (they don’t have to be Apple), and assuming that the port is TB3-compatible, it would mean even more use of Thunderbolt, which can hardly be regarded as A Bad Thing(TM), IMO. No, not all change is bad, of course. It’s not always good, though, either, and merely accepting it is no bench test. See the recent discussion on subscriptions for a nice illustration. Personal experience says that the optical drive connected to my iMac is by no means as important as it once was, but I’m still grateful to have it attached. I’m afraid streaming and cloud-based services are the culprit, which would have been OK by itself, but also that Apple dropped them from their desktops far more recklessly than was warranted. Apple, of course, maintains cloud-based streaming services … Windows XP? Yeah, still the only version of Windows I use regularly (in a VM). But only for Windowsy things like games; nothing recent. Even though I hate what Windows is turning into, I’d *never* recommend its continued use as a primary OS, and I agree that people who are clinging onto it for dear life at this point are, well, being rather silly. Anyway, carry on. :) -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at [email protected] The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
