Scott and all,
if you don't mind my asking, how is Braille the weak point of OSX? I'll
have to vehemently disagree with you hereon, and here's why.
I have an older Focus 40 USB Braille display, and I took it down to
North Carolina when I visited Chris Gilland a few years ago. He was
thinking about acquiring a Macintosh computer himself, so he wanted to
see how Braille works on OSX with Voiceover.
I had been in Windows since Christmas of 1997, when I received a
computer from my family. It was running Jaws 3.0, and I was using a
hardware Doubletalk PC. Yeah, that was back in em air days, Sunny? LOL!
I had become accustomed to plugging in the display, not getting much
screen reader feedback save for the fact that Windows sees the display.
if it's the first time, then of course Windows tries to pull the drivers
et alia. Then, I'd have to locate the Braille settings to the screen
reader and tell it to use the display. Then and only then, I'm live. Not
with OSX that is, says Yoda.
We plugged that mother into Chris's macBook. It had never seen this
display a day in its freaking life. I heard the little da-boong sound
that Voiceover makes when a Braille display is plugged in, and I was in!
it was trippy. Literally instantaneously, we were using Braille on OSX.
I was floored! Then when I heard that OSX Lion would bring the genie out
of the bottle in terms of languages, I was raring to go, and so was my
Mid 2010 white stock polycarbon MacBook! NVDA is amazing with Braille.
Jaws has a ways yet to go, and I don't know about Satogo or Window-Eyes.
OSX takes the cake hands down in terms of Braille support.
Ben
On 6/27/2016 12:27, Scott Granados wrote:
Just to add to your comments, Braille is by far the weak point in my mind.
Braille on OSX is bad or at least with my Focus 40. That’s a definite
weakness you point out that I can attest to from personal experience.
On 6/27/16, 2:50 PM, "Larry Thacker Jr." <[email protected] on
behalf of [email protected]> wrote:
It was Windows 10 that did it for me. I got tired of the inconsistency and the
issues with accessibility. I’ve been reading and listening to podcasts about
the Mac for years, so in March I bought my first Mac. It’s a Mini, with
processor and RAM upgraded sufficiently that I feel comfortable running Windows
from within if I find it necessary. I may in fact find it necessary for one
primary reason. There really isn’t a good Braille production program for Mac,
and I need one. Over all, I have been much happier with the Mac. It took a
bit of adjustment and I still get tripped up occasionally by the differences.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be totally comfortable with the way editing works,
especially since I have to use Windows at work so I can never truly escape. If
I had to answer the question in a word, it would be stability. My Mac doesn’t
crash, doesn’t suddenly slow to a crawl for no reason, is totally booted and
with everything I was working on last I used it before the windows machine has
even presented a login screen, and integrates marvelously with my iPhone.
Every time I boot the Windows machine, which is slowly becoming more and more
unusable, I wish I could toss it out the window.! I am hoping that with Mac
usage on the rise, we won’t be left out in the cold with braille publication
forever. That will be the day I find an interesting and satisfying way to
dispose of the big black box on the floor of my office.
Not that the Mac is perfect. I’m replying to this reply because I tried to
delete some of the messages in this thread and leave others. I went up too far
and got the conversation group. Everything went away and undo didn’t. I can’t
even find the messages in the trash.
On Jun 27, 2016, at 10:51 AM, Mike Arrigo <[email protected]> wrote:
Here are my reasons whyI think the mac is better and why I left the Windows
world, at least for home use. First, an excellent screen reader is built in to
the operating system. I think you said you were using a mac mini, you can use
the track pad if you have one, I use the numpad commander on my mac mini, it
makes navigating easier. You can change a voiceover setting so you don't have
to interact with most things if it's too confusing for you. You can reinstall
your operating system, even with a new hard drive without requiring sighted
help. I think the mac provides the best experience when browsing the internet.
This is not an accessibility feature, but the mac operating system is much
cleaner than windows. The applications are self contained, you don't have a
central registry controlling everything, or shared files that need to be
installed all over the place. Finally, Apple has maintained the same interface
over several versions of the operating system, they don't feel a need to change
it with each version the way Microsoft changes Windows. If it ain't broke,
don't fix it.
Original message:
Please forgive the long message to follow. Just delete it if you don't want to
read it.
I have been messing around with my new Mac Mini over the weekend. I have the
two books, Everything You Need To Know To Use The Mac With El Capitan And Voice
Over, by Janet Ingber, and Mastering The Macintosh With Voice Over, by Tim
Sniffen.I thoroughly expected not to know what I am doing for a while, at the
moment, that is an understatement. I have it set up, thanks to Mr. Sniffen's
book, Ms. Ingber seems to assume one will have sighted help to do that. I have
been with windows since 2000, and Jaws 3.5. I still have Jaws, having bought,
last December, the SMA through version 19. I have to figure out, by July 5,
whether I want to take the Mac back to the Apple store to get my money back. So
far, it seems like a bunch of incredible tedium to get things done, as compared
to Windows. The track pad helps, it makes it a little more like my iPhone 6,
that I love. Getting things done on the iPhone never seemed to have nearly the
tedium as does the Mac,even when my iPhone 5 was new to me. For example, having
to interact with things, rather than just hitting enter when I want to do
something, or press two or three keys at the same time to get VoiceOver to do
something, I have no doubt that I can learn it, but My nagging question during
my 14 days is going to be: why? What is so much better about this than Windows?
Is the Mac really better, or just different? Is, for example, iTunes really
easier to use? What little I have investigated, I am not yet convinced that it
is. Already having Jaws, I don't have the issue of having to buy a windows
screen reader, and NVDA is making it unnecessary even for a new Windows user to
do so. I paid over 50 percent more for this Mac Mini than I could have bought a
Windows 10 computer. I wish I had 30 days, rather than 14, to figure this out.
The time is ticking. What is so much better about this than Windows, which I
already know how to use?
Arnold Schmidt --
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]/
<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]
<mailto:[email protected]>.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries
<https://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries>.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout
<https://groups.google.com/d/optout>.
--
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.
--
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.
