Fusion is a paid product, but you can use Player for free if that meets your
needs. It doesn't do certain things like snapshots IIRC, but you can run a
Windows VM.
Concerning the configuration, I'd customise the VM for the first time
immediately after creating it, before even starting it. Then
Thanks for the report. I wonder why Narrator is now broken during setup? Do you
suppose it applies to physical installs as well? Anyone know, tried it?
Anyway, I too am now running the beta and can confirm that it works for my
Linux VM, in which I now have Braille through BRLTTY and, at least,
This bug affected both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs in the same way. Fusion
does indeed work on Apple Silicon, when not affected by this bug. The latest
Sonoma has fixed it; when I upgrade to the next minor point release, I'll see
if the fix is in there, but if not then it's the next major
The link was the one in my earlier email; here it is again:
https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Fusion-Discussions/VMs-shut-down-immediately-after-start-in-Fusion-Player-13-5-on/td-p/2992545
The really great news is that Apple have (surprise, surprise) just now updated
Sonoma beta and,
I don't hold out much hope to be honest, but I'll let you know if the beta
fixes it, otherwise I'm looking at more time booted into Windows and using UTM
for Linux. Meanwhile, if you're affected and you care, pester Apple
Accessibility about it—it may not be their product, but it's certainly
So there’s activity on the VMWare Communities thread discussing this:
https://communities.vmware.com/t5/VMware-Fusion-Discussions/VMs-shut-down-immediately-after-start-in-Fusion-Player-13-5-on/td-p/2992545
I have yet to try the latest Sonoma beta to see if this is fixed, as suggested.
Anyone
UTM is a graphical frontend to qemu. It's accessible, absolutely, once you have
a feel for it—certainly more than Parallels which needs you to use VOCR just to
get set up. Definitely give it a try and see if it meets your needs. The Spice
guest tools (or qemu agent on other platforms) go into
Yeah, I guess. System-wide spell check? Built-in dictionary? Oh hang on, Apple
have sabotaged that for VoiceOver users now too, haven't they?
I do think the app scene is somewhat better on Mac though. RSS readers and
podcatchers, file transfer, sync and backup utilities, etc. together with a
Thank you for an excellent review, Donnah.
I guess unsurprisingly, the part that interests me most is thecombination of
iPhone and Activator, since that's clearly the dominant use case, but the
assembly sounds rather brittle and then the issue of newer USB-C iphones. I
won't be buying any time
The database is a single bundle. Just find the one with the newest timestamp in
the name, copy it in position in your Music folder, then hold Option down as
you launch Music from the dock (that is, press Option-Enter with Music
selected) and choose the file you just copied. This should update
For myself, macOS means lots of different things to me, when it isn't broken,
but especially Spatterlight, for text adventures AKA Interactive Fiction, and a
UNIX environment underneath. Of course nothing says I won't ever go back to
Windoze, but I think Marc has it right—use both platforms to
But the problem of back-to-back requests isn't really that Siri doesn't go
away. It's that having made your request, you can't really review the output
because while Siri is listening VoiceOver refuses to talk. And if you dismiss
Siri by asking it to sod off—an absurd requirement, in any
I can’t find a source for the news that Broadcom fired accessibility team
employees from VMware, although of course they did fire many employees,
generally.
Anyway, I was rather annoyed to find that my Christmas wouldn’t go to plan
because of the latest issues with Sonoma and Fusion. Something
I posted this on AppleVis and thought you’d benefit as well. A bit more techie
than is ideal but I hope someone here will still find it useful. It’s
absolutely transformative for me.
https://www.applevis.com/forum/macos-mac-apps/nuts-n-bolts-remote-access-screen-sharing-blackhole-sonobus-vpn
It is indeed very impressive, but still, I await the new high-end Silicon-based
desktop Macs. If the current trajectory is any indication, they should be
incomparable.
Cheers,
Sabahattin
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I have for sale in the UK an iMac 27-inch, early 2019 with:
- 8-core I9 3.6 GHz
- 8 GB RAM (user-upgradable to 128 GB but see below)
- 2 TB SSD
- 8 GB VRAM (Vega graphics)
I am asking £2700 for this configuration.
Notable distinctions: this is the last Intel iMac but one, and which does not
OK, I misunderstood you that you needed Windows. I mostly agree in that case; I
also use Terminal and Linux VMs a lot and rarely need Windows. Even so, I think
not having it at all would be a problem; there are just some things you need
Windows for, including, yes, Office apps, but also running
Of course, a Mac Mini is desktop hardware. Although I’ve found the latest M1
Mini doesn’t require a dummy HDMI adaptor anymore (and, in fact, connecting one
actually slows it down) there’s no getting away from the thermal limitations of
a notebook, especially when it’s closed.
Laptops are for
I just reinstalled a Windows VM to run a firmware update utility for the Focus
5 display. Says it all, really. I did not even bother entering a product key,
password, or account. It was the shortest-lived Windows VM imaginable.
I agree that your situation is deeply grim, but much as it pains me
Abbyy FineReader was replaced by FineReader PDF, but I’ve not yet bought that
to discover its accessibility. Of course, though not using the same
intelligence present in macOS, it is very good at turning documents into
formatted text and is made for the purpose. You’ll probably want to use a
Yup, this has been the case for a while now, at least Big Sur. Connect or make
available a trackpad or mouse in pairing mode, and the blocker will disappear.
You can then proceed without.
It’s a bloody nuisance, but fortunately I have a trackpad on hand. A new buyer
of my Mac Mini didn’t,
My experience of iOS apps on Apple Silicon is that while it works in principle,
you probably will find that it’s more trouble than it’s worth in practice. It
does depend on several factors, but especially apps that have web views in them
are surprisingly difficult to manage. Catalyst (what
Sorry, I don’t know what you mean by “running Mac on Windows”.
You can already virtualise (that is, create a virtual environment for) and
dual-boot (that is, reboot and then start as though on a PC) Windows. Macs make
very fine Windows machines either way, providing you understand the
It’s absolutely right that Apple Silicon is the future and if you’re buying
now, and want to have maximum future and feature support, that’s the way to go.
I would not dismiss Intel Macs out of hand—they can do one thing Apple Silicon
can’t, namely, run Microsoft Windows. They are available now
I don’t think there’s any meaningful difference, personally, certainly no more
than would normally be expected for machines of similar benchmarks on either
platform. So, for instance, my 2019 iMac is more powerful than my 2020 M1 Mac
Mini, and it feels just the same. JMO.
I can’t wait to see
I’m sure there are people at Apple Accessibility who care, but I don’t think
it’s a coincidence that in general accessibility feature announcements are
coordinated with OS releases which generate PR headlines for Apple. In the end,
Apple are a business, accessibility was something they
The RC came out, so I took the plunge. Sorry to say that the problems are still
there.
If you use Books and run into this bug, however infrequently, please let Apple
know so they’ll be more inclined to fix for the next point-version. I don’t
know about you, but I’m foolish enough to live by
Subject says it all, really. Anyone have a Series 7 Apple Watch and wish to
comment on the delights of the new slide-to-type keyboard as it relates to
VoiceOver? Would you call it a killer feature that’s worth the upgrade?
Cheers,
Sabahattin
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Thanks for the suggestion but, alas, it didn't work at all. In fact, curiously,
the problems occurred in exactly the same places, accounting for font size.
It's very, very bizarre.
Cheers,
Sabahattin
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Thanks. I’m using the 15.0.2 stable release, but I’ve sent in a feedback on it
anyway. Here’s to hoping the fix is due in an upcoming release. I’m reluctant
to move onto the betas again right now while I’m standardising my clean
installs on 15 stable, but once the release notes are in for the
Hi all.
Anyone having trouble with the Books app on iOS 15 and VoiceOver? Specifically,
navigation is inconsistent, pages appear to be blank, links are all that can be
focussed, and other such discomforts that, for all practical purposes, make the
thing unusable? I’m getting this whatever
Perhaps a year or so. It has this inaccessible nagware banner but once you hit
enter a couple of times you should just be in a multi-window app. Try checking
out the menu bar and preferences.
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Last I tried it, Transmission was more or less accessible. It's a native app.
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It’s DMARC. What you’re seeing there is Google Groups (and other mailing list
managers) rewriting the From: header so it is the list address, so that
recipients of the mailing list traffic which check DMARC policy for the From:
address don’t subsequently bounce the message and get themselves
I have a barely-used 2020 M1 Mac Mini with 16 GB RAM and 2 TB SSD for sale in
the UK. It’s going for £1200 including postage, which is a £500 saving over the
current sales price from Apple. Included: Mac Mini 2020 M1, UK power adaptor.
I’ll ship it to you with the latest stable operating system
Mail stores all its stuff in ~/Library/Mail (the folder Mail in the folder
Library in your home directory under Users on your startup device). Have a good
ferret around in there. Apple explicitly documents manipulation of local
mailboxes in the Finder, so it cannot be so bad—albeit that finding
I notice a steady stream of new VO-using Mac switchers, and I was just
wondering what brought them all to the fold in recent times. Is it all about
Apple Silicon, or are there other developments out there in the Windows world
that are driving this? Something else, perhaps?
Cheers,
Sabahattin
FWIW, I intend to hang on to my M1 Mini. Although I just unfortunately missed
out on the option of 10-gigabit Ethernet, which would have made it the ideal
server, I really can't fault the performance; the hard part is just setting the
wee bugger up again. I do run Windows on my iMac, but I
Of course I understand all the (perceived?) wisdom of starting from scratch, I
just don't accept that it shouldn't be possible to migrate, now that bootable
clones are essentially off the table. Whatever you may have thought of them as
a means of moving from one machine to another, they were a
Commiserations to you, Donna. I was wondering what had become of your migration
problem. I am having the same problem, and I reject utterly the idea that it
should not work—it is, after all, a supported method for migration! I shall be
working on an alternative strategy to clone my data volume
VMWare say they won't support ARM64 Windows for licencing reasons at the moment
(silly policy IMO, but there we are), but also I don't know what the screen
reader situation is on ARM64 Windows at the moment either. If you want to run
Windows and macOS on the same box, you continue to need an
Hi,
I seem to remember that a recent iOS update allows us to send our VoiceOver
speech across a FaceTime call. I can’t for the life of me remember how it’s
done, even though I’m almost sure I found the option once.
Anyone here know how it’s done?
Cheers,
Sabahattin
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Well, I wouldn’t say usable, but the Nighthawk app is just about useful, for
the basics. With mine in AP mode, that’s not much. The web interface is
suitably stodgy and accessible, though it doesn’t always expose the same info
as the app (e.g. Wi-Fi link rates for each client). There are many,
Well, to be fair I have found screen recognition to be especially helpful in
one specific app, the GlocalMe app, which was only partially accessible
beforehand, though really only to the extent of making a single element
containing multiple elements accessible so that they can now be
I did not test iOS 14 this time, and have just now bitten the bullet and
upgraded my iPod Touch 5th gen, which is just over a year old, to iOS 14.0.1
release. I now see that, as reported, this device loses out on the neat new VO
recognition features (but not, curiously, the sound recognition
In the event that the news hasn’t reached you yet, perhaps via the Fusion
update process, VMware Fusion 12 is released (and Workstation 16). If you buy
an upgrade to either for the princely sum of $99, you can access both on 3
personal machines. Also, there’s a free Player tier, for those whose
To download all podcasts, make sure you’re in the Podcasts view in iTunes
(Mojave or earlier, or Windows). In the sidebar, if visible (if not, make it
so), make sure Podcasts is selected (you can hide it again, after doing this).
Press Library, to get the library view. In the View Options (View
If you open Preferences in Mail, go to the toolbar and press Accounts, make
sure your iCloud account is selected in the table, then make sure you’re on the
Account Information tab, look for the field called Email Address, you should
have a pop-up button which if you press it, enumerates all
I often find that you can give Windows VMs focus if you just turn VO off
temporarily and hit Tab enough times. Once your keyboard is grabbed, you can
turn VO on again, if you like.
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Cyberduck is excellent and works well. Free to download, but you can “Purchase”
it from the Mac App Store to support the developer and get seamless automatic
updates. Mountain Duck, a companion app, supports Cyberduck’s file transfer
engine from Finder without using kernel extensions (albeit
Hi guys,
What's the consensus on Nisus Writer? If I needed a step up from TextEdit—and I
admit that I'm not really clear on why I would—then would Nisus Writer Pro be a
worthwhile investment?
Cheers,
Sabahattin
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Do this from the address to which you expect to receive mail, and from which
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Yep. I’d love to see Thunderbird get the same work. It probably won’t be as
“native” as Mail.app but it has more functionality, and plugins. Great choice
on Windows.
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Guys, please don’t leave. If you leave, you just surrender a useful resource to
some behaviourally challenged individuals and it’s a dead loss to everyone else.
The right thing to do is:
1. Contact the mods and/or owner.
2. Filter your email. Mail.app will do it on macOS; iOS has a block
macOS Braille support is already generally poor, but it is very noticeable in
Safari where scrolling/panning behaviour is completely broken.
Alternatives are Chromium-based browsers, but those aren't immune from ceisures
either; use a Windows screen reader for the smoothest experience across
I think it was always the lack of a portable API for toolkit vendors to
program. I’m sorry that Apple never did that; it’s clearly been an impediment
not otherwise necessary to overcome on other platforms. It’s not always
possible to subclass or overload, so you need to handle accessibility
If your distro packages it, install open-vm-tools. These are VMWare’s guest
tools ported to particular distributions. VMware encourages this.
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I don’t take AppleInsider very seriously. I mean, they’re shameless apologists,
which makes it very hard to tell how much is Apple worship and how much
informed opinion. Much more important: they’ve censored some of my more sweary
comments in the past, and there’s just no forgiving that. ;-)
You can still get the old Downloads window back, if you want it badly enough.
But it’s a fiddly thing: you have to drag and drop the Downloads button out of
the toolbar, and doing that with VO is still surprisingly hard because you’ll
usually activate it in the process. It’s easier just to
I’d use Downcast because it has a Mac app, but it has (had?) a distressing
habit of destroying its synchronisation state database on a fairly regular
basis. How are things nowadays with that app. Are there really any other
choices for users of both iOS and macOS, besides Apple Podcasts and
Weird, I can barely hear mine, although to be fair it is elevated on my desk
and behind an iMac. I have set the PC speaker to its loudest volume by raising
it as far as it will go with nothing connected to the headphone socket and in
Sound preferences. But it’s really not all that loud, at
Ditto (Mac Mini 2018). Too damned quiet.
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Still no accessibility ratings or reviews in the App Store, of course. Privacy,
sure. But not accessibility.
We can hope that these changes make more apps accessible, but I can’t help
thinking that the other guys are starting to make Apple’s commitment to
accessibility look just a little bit
Thanks, great idea. Unfortunately the setting is already set to speak. Also
it’s only happening during continuous read; normally it’s behaving exactly as
it should. Is it working in continuous read for you also?
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Hi crowd.
It's driving me bonkers. Whenever I do a read all in any web content, VO fails
to announce links, even as it patiently points out headings, when I really need
it to be the other way around, as it once used to be, not that long ago I am
sure. I could reliably listen to articles; now I
Unfortunately, the answer is, “I’m sorry Andrew, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
The problem is that the AirPort Express supports the STA (station) proxy mode,
wherein each Ethernet and Wi-Fi device connected to the extension is proxied to
your existing network as a Wi-Fi station itself. This is
OK, well the situation has improved slightly, in that I now have single items
being copied from the list view in Books into a list in Finder using
drag-and-drop. But still no joy with multi-select.
The difference: use the Catalina version of Books, instead of the Mojave one.
Apparently there
Apple has a disk image with the packaged Yosemite installer available from here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210717
You could download that—of course, this means you’ll need a good Internet
connection—and then build your external boot media from the app thus installed.
Yosemite was a
Hi Tim,
I usually tried using the leftmost column, which is usually empty. However I
have also tried (and just tried again) with the title, author and category
columns. Those appear sometimes to work like edit boxes, in that they are
announced as such once the mouse is clicked and held with
Hi Tim,
Thanks so much for trying, but I’m afraid it’s just no go for me. I’ve tried
everything now, I’m sure. I even checked the size and positioning of the
windows and ensured Books and Finder each had a half to themselves. But
whatever I do, I just can’t make Books transfer books—even
Hi Pete,
Yes, I did find it, but for some strange reason not in the same thread. I’ve
been a bit late to certain email lists and I think I’ve ended up replying to
threads that have long since been dealt with; yours must have been one of those.
I’m glad it works through your local NAT
Hi Tim,
Well, I tried and tried, but tragically I just can’t make it work in list view.
I really hope there’s something obvious I’m missing here.
What part of the table row should I click and hold down on? Is the Finder for
you in any particular mode? Anything else in particular I’m not
Hi Pete,
Your Windows VM won’t discover your NAS while sharing a connection with your
Mac. You should put the network adaptor inside the VM (go to the settings) into
bridge mode with the network adaptor that your Mac is using to connect to your
network. Once you’ve done that, your Windows VM
There’s one other reason you’d want iTunes Match instead of or in addition to
Apple Music that I’ve not yet seen mentioned: DRM. If you use Apple Music
exclusively, you always get DRM, whether or not you uploaded your content. This
is problematic if you routinely rely on syncing to other
Aha, thanks! I have a license to this from my bank, but could not use it; now
I’ll be able to try again.
Cheers,
Sabahattin
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Thanks for that, Tim. I gave it another shot, this time using the mouse up/down
keys, and I managed to make it work. The missing link, for me, is that the book
had to be dragged in the grid view; it didn’t work on list view. It did not
appear to matter what mode Finder was in—it worked fine in
The correct way is to drag the books from the Books app to a Finder window.
Only, in keeping with Apple’s commitment to accessibility, there’s no keyboard
shortcut to do that and I’ve never made it work with VoiceOver commands. Good
to know that others are feeling my pain, though—there’s no
The biggest reason I am still disinclined to upgrade my 8 Plus right now is the
scrolling behaviour. This is just very, very annoying and broken, and it
appears to be a known issue, but some screens especially those in Settings
cannot be swiped through consistently because of the appearance of
It depends how you’ll use your AirPorts.
You can turn them into bridges, which means they extend a wireless network
using Ethernet or wireless. To be honest though, this is mesh network
territory, and unless you have a particularly ingrained fetish for speed and
will use Ethernet exclusively
Split Screen lets you run multiple iPad apps together, side by side. You’ll
know if you’re using it. You can dismiss a split screen pane when it’s active,
and you have to activate the feature whenever you need it. So unless you’re
intentionally using split screen, it’s not being used. If you
You can turn off multiple pane iPad apps? So you can make Mail and Settings
look like the ones on the iPhone? Or do you just mean not using split screen,
which yes, is optional?
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I still use a Time Capsule, but in bridged mode for exclusive use as a wireless
access point, with my own Linux box as router doing PPPoE to a VDSL modem. This
overcomes the chief limitation of the device, which is translation speed beyond
about 300 MB/s. My bandwidth does not yet exceed 80
It seems to me that if iPhone got keyboard shortcuts then many of the supposed
advantages of the iPad would disappear. I had avoided iPad specifically because
of the split-screen app layouts that I do not like very much, but perhaps this
is just another inevitable that I have to face.
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The
Well I’ll agree they’re bloody expensive (£399 here). But if I have to get an
iPhone I’d rather it be plus-sized. Data connectivity is not critical to me,
but remember, it represents an extra burden (radio you may not be using, and
the need for a SIM card). If Apple could just make a slightly
Agreed; seems much more likely that this will be Apple’s opportunity to move us
all into the streaming world. Never say never, I suppose, but at best iTunes
will be in the Utilities folder or something. I can’t imagine them trying to
keep any aspect of the local library management stuff,
I reluctantly bought it. I hope I don’t get buyer’s remorse, even though I’m
almost sure I will. My problem is that my current iPod is an iPhone 6S Plus, a
great device at the right size and with Touch ID, but with inadequate storage.
An iPod Touch is a clear upgrade—or it would be, if not for
Nope, no carrier restriction on that particular feature. The only possible
explanation is that somehow the traffic is being obstructed, assuming
everything else is set up correctly.
Sorry, no idea. :(
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Scott, exactly. A common lingua franca for networked speakers and a commitment
for USB, HDMI and SPDIF would suit me, and I imagine a lot of people, down to
the ground.
We can start by looking at the UPnP forum, which show us by glowing example how
not to do it. :)
But they had the right
Buying and ripping DVDs is a sensible strategy. It might make a mess, but you
will truly own your content. You might reconsider if you really want to own,
over download services. JMO. I buy anything good, and rent the rest online.
This means I have lots of comedy, and not much else. :)
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Certainly you can play text adventures on a Mac, but for various reasons I
still do so in Windows. The game you mentioned is unknown to me.
Which games did you have in mind? How much trouble are you willing to put in
to this? And have you got a Windows VM?
The audyssey list and
The minimum hardware list for Sierra seems purely punitive to me. They’ve got
support for a MacBook, but not the Pro of the same vintage and essentially the
same 2009 hardware specs?
El Cap was an all right release, but I wouldn’t be going out and buying a Mac
that couldn’t run the latest.
Nope, SMS forwarding only requires that all involved devices be using iMessage.
The SMS messages are sent to Apple for forwarding to your other devices.
So no, no Bluetooth required.
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As Kawal said, the trick here is to have some free terrestrial TV, but in
practice I never watch it because if I tried hard enough I could just get it
streamed to me, and for some reason I always get my news through the straw that
is online news articles and videos on the web, played on my
More confirmation here:
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/29/cirrus-logic-mfi-lightning-headphone-dev-kit/
Lightning. Still not happy about it, but then I’m not buying an iPhone 7, so
it’s OK, for now. Gotta love the Apple pundits continuing to be completely,
ahem, tone deaf on the issue.
Nah, I doubt Apple will switch to USB-C for iOS devices. It’s actually thicker
and wider than Lightning (albeit faster, too). And then of course there’s
always the $$$ Apple would miss out on because of the “Made for iPhone”
certification on Lightning peripherals (which is guaranteed using an
Yeah, good speakers aren’t a thing any more because “Good enough”. There must
be a solution to this problem. Nobody wants to build up an expensive component
system because playing your media from analog or digital sources requires
physical effort and requires actually getting up off the sofa.
Yep Scott, glad you mentioned Win10 privacy, I forgot about that, and yes
that’s why I’m not using it. It’s not to say that it’s a bad OS, though,
because it isn’t, but there’s still Win8.1 and Classic Shell or, if you want to
go retro, Win7. Both run on that Mac Mini 2014 and Win8.1 and CS
My primary reason for still using the Mac at this point is the frustration-free
robustness of the OS and screen reader (if you’re on the right release,
anyway). You really do get a lot in the package, especially if you also have
iOS, but system-wide spell-check is still one of my favourite
I’m not against progress, but I’m still for a standard connector if we’re going
to replace the 3.5 mm jack. Same goal, different direction. Apple proprietary
for something so fundamental as headphones is user-hostile and stupid, but not
if we can move as one to an unfragmented, new market of
I think AppleSIM is presently a dual-use option on iPad only at the moment.
It’s a nice idea and apparently does help in certain cases where the
alternative is full-on international roaming charges (but still not quite as
cost-effective as buying local, obviously).
But really, yeah, it’s just
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