date:20161104

Re: 2016 Macbook Pro

2016-11-04 Thread David Chittenden

One of my favourite arguments from blind people about using the keyboard is: 
many sighted people use the keyboard. It is faster than mouse / touchpad / 
touchscreen. This argument is actually a fallasy.

First, the sighted people I know use the keyboard and shortcut keys, rather 
than the mouse. This argument is predicated on the belief, and sometimes fact, 
that I as a blind person have impressed my sighted colleagues, and they now do 
the shortcut keys like I do. When true,less than 0.5% of the population does 
not contact, at the level of significant influence, that many other people. I 
have had this experience myself, where I convinced some sighted computer techs 
to use shortcut keys rather than clicking menubar, then option. When I checked 
a few months later, with these people, most of them were back to menubar click 
then option click. In other words, the person did not continue with the 
shortcut keys. Why? Because, clicking does not require remembering keystrokes. 
And, people who use shortcut keys for specific apps at high production levels, 
tend to use menubars and clicks in other aspects of computer use. Again, this 
is because, outside high productivity, clicking on visual aspects is easier for 
those who can do so.

Next, touchscreen and touchbar visual access. This has been scientifically 
studied for many years. The fact is, error rates of end-users decrease 
dramatically when well-set-up touch interfaces are introduced. I researched 
this in 2012. At that time, standard error rates which required tech support 
assistance was around 15% with systems which were keyboard and button placed. 
However, for systems which switched to touchscreen-based, error rates and 
support assistance dropped to 3% to 5%. It must be noted that this was the same 
across every industry research study I read. In fact, I, and my research 
librarian, specifically searched for any study that showed the reverse.

In other words, as I regularly state, I choose to stay where general market 
tech is headed, as much as I am able. This way, I hopefully will be less stuck 
when the incrimental changes lead to very different technology interfaces. Air 
gestures will be significantly more difficult for the blind than touchscreen, 
and I still suspect air gestures is where we are headed.

Kind regards,

David Chittenden, MSc, MRCAA
Email: dchitten...@gmail.com
Mobile: +64 21 2288 288
Sent from my iPhone

> On 5/11/2016, at 15:55, Tree Mabry  wrote:
> 
> I ordered the 13 inch, non touch bar model, with the 2.0 processor, 256 gigs 
> of storage, and 16 gigs of ram. A few days ago I wrote an extensive post on 
> Apple Vis, about what went into this decision; I have copied and pasted some 
> of that post below; I’m sorry that it’s a bit long. You can read the full 
> post at this link.
> 
> http://www.applevis.com/forum/hardware-accessories/why-i-just-ordered-2016-mac-book-pro-function-keys
> 
> 
> 
> I think that the people who have expressed a desire to stay on top of the 
> latest trends in user interface might be especially interested in my 
> paragraph about Apple’s official touch bar user interface guidelines.
> 
> First let me say that I was pretty open to the idea of the touch bar last 
> week as I watched the Apple event. I felt pretty confident that Apple would 
> make sure that this new interface worked with voice over. In the days after 
> the event I hungrily tried to find any information about how exactly Voice 
> Over accessibility would work with the touch bar. Ironically when I did come 
> across some specifics they both encouraged me, and at the same time helped me 
> decide that I have no interest in the touch bar. The best info I have found 
> so far about Voice Over and the touch bar comes from I accessibility, here is 
> a link to the relevant article.
> 
> http://iaccessibility.net/index.php/2016/10/28/voiceover-at-the-bar/
> 
> The main takeaways are, you can use the number keys as function keys, there 
> are keystrokes for raising and lowering volume, and to interact with sliders 
> on the touch bar you have to double tap and hold, wait for a tone, and then 
> slide your finger. I think the volume keystrokes, and the number keys acting 
> as function keys makes a lot of sense, and I'm really glad Apple is doing 
> things that way. However, as soon as I realized how relieved I was about 
> these changes, I realized the relief was based around me being able to avoid 
> using the touch bar.
> 
> Basically I do not believe that the touch bar is going to make many things 
> more efficient or easier for voice over users. Take the sliders I previously 
> mentioned. I would much rather turn down brightness by simply holding down a 
> key, instead of the three step process voice over users will have to navigate.
> 
> To some up my thoughts about touch bar and accessibility, I believe the 
> experience will be fine, but I do not think it will be better then what we 
> already have.

I ordered the 13 inch, non touch bar model, with the 2.0 processor, 256
gigs of storage, and 16 gigs of ram. A few days ago I wrote an extensive
post on Apple Vis, about what went into this decision; I have copied and
pasted some of that post below; I’m sorry that it’s a bit long. You can
read the full post at this link.

http://www.applevis.com/forum/hardware-accessories/why-i-just-ordered-2016-mac-book-pro-function-keys

I think that the people who have expressed a desire to stay on top of the
latest trends in user interface might be especially interested in my
paragraph about Apple’s official touch bar user interface guidelines.

First let me say that I was pretty open to the idea of the touch bar last
week as I watched the Apple event. I felt pretty confident that Apple would
make sure that this new interface worked with voice over. In the days after
the event I hungrily tried to find any information about how exactly Voice
Over accessibility would work with the touch bar. Ironically when I did
come across some specifics they both encouraged me, and at the same time
helped me decide that I have no interest in the touch bar. The best info I
have found so far about Voice Over and the touch bar comes from I
accessibility, here is a link to the relevant article.

http://iaccessibility.net/index.php/2016/10/28/voiceover-at-the-bar/

The main takeaways are, you can use the number keys as function keys, there
are keystrokes for raising and lowering volume, and to interact with
sliders on the touch bar you have to double tap and hold, wait for a tone,
and then slide your finger. I think the volume keystrokes, and the number
keys acting as function keys makes a lot of sense, and I'm really glad
Apple is doing things that way. However, as soon as I realized how relieved
I was about these changes, I realized the relief was based around me being
able to avoid using the touch bar.

Basically I do not believe that the touch bar is going to make many things
more efficient or easier for voice over users. Take the sliders I
previously mentioned. I would much rather turn down brightness by simply
holding down a key, instead of the three step process voice over users will
have to navigate.

To some up my thoughts about touch bar and accessibility, I believe the
experience will be fine, but I do not think it will be better then what we
already have.

I know this post is getting very very long, but I want to now get into the
primary reasons I have decided to pass on the touch bar, and they have
little to do with voice over Accessibility.

1. I do not believe the touch bar will offer anything to power users who
know there keystrokes.

If you are an IOS user who wants to get into the mac, the touch bar might
be a good way for you to uncover features you didn't know about. But as a
long time mac user who knows the keystrokes by heart, it doesn't seem like
the touch bar is going to do much that keystrokes can't already do. One of
the best list of touch bar features I know about comes from I more.

http://www.imore.com/mac-touch-bar

I have gone through this list, and almost everything in it is either doable
with keystrokes, or does not interest me. Here are a few examples of touch
bar features and the corresponding keystrokes.

Activate Siri, hold down command space, activate dictation, hit function
key twice, new folder in the finder, shift command enter, Reply to email,
command r, compose new email, command N, send email, command shift d, new
tab in Safari command t, Etc. Etc. Etc. you get the picture.

Now if you read the entire I more list, you might accuse me of
cherrypicking features to make my point. It's true that I'm leaving out a
lot of features, but that is because it would be tedious for me to list
them here, and rotating photos or using final cut do not matter to me. Just
to be fair, the one and only feature of the touch bar, that we do currently
know about, and does interest me is predictive typing. I have long believed
that the native mac spell checker is a joke, and I struggle with spelling,
so predictive typing on the mac could be great for me. However, that one
feature is not enough for me to want the touch bar, and there is nothing
inherent about predictive typing that necessitates a touch bar; it could
easily be accomplished through keystrokes.

It’s not an accident that many of the touch bar features can be accessed
through key strokes; Apple’s’ official user interface guidelines for the
touch bar state, "Don’t expose functionality solely in the Touch Bar. Not
all devices have a Touch Bar, and people can disable app controls in the
Touch Bar if they choose. Always provide ways to perform tasks using the
keyboard or trackpad.” I know that some people feel the need to have the
touch bar so that they do not miss out and are able to stay ahead of the
technology curve, but I think these guidelines make it pretty clear that
the touch bar is not going

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