I know I appreciate your posts, and it's obvious you put some thought into your opinions and your posts as well. I'd agree you're one of the 20 people who contributes 80% of the worthwhile content on this list.
I haven't given up my Booksense yet. I still get a lot of content from the NLS here in the US, and that's pretty much exclusively what I use my Booksense for now. I totally agree with your statements about JAWS. I would not have been employed for the last 25 years without JAWS. I needed to work with Lotus Notes, Excel and so on, and no other screen reader would have allowed me to do that. As you said, I don't begrudge the update fees I've paid to FS, and it would still have been worth it if I'd had to pay quite a bit more! I work in software engineering, and a lot of what you said is right on. I'm not familiar with FS's software engineering processes or code, but these issues aren't as straightforward as a lot of users realize. Testing JAWS across all of the systems, graphics adapters and other configurations is a huge and expensive task. FS has to make business decisions and assume a certain amount of risk in their testing. I know users have their pet features and bugs, but again FS has to make a business decision on where to strike the balance between fixing bugs and developing new features. None of this is unique to FS, and I hear the same things with every product I've worked on. I'm also puzzled by how many people have blinders on when it comes to new features. If they personally don't see a benefit for it then they just pan it and chastise JAWS for wasting resources on some useless new feature instead of fixing their pet bug. The don't seem to realize that just because they don't see a value in a particular feature that there may be others out there who will take advantage of that FEATURE. Of course, businesses can make the wrong call. I think even now FS would agree that some of their features didn't work out, such as Research It, and HIMS with their voice recognition feature, but I'd rather have a company looking to be innovative and come up with a new technology that I haven't thought of rather than just get stagnant. I mean, how many blind people figured we'd never be able to use a touch interface? I'm glad Apple just didn't listen to the masses. On 23/08/12 10:00, Sieghard Weitzel wrote: > Hi Christopher, > > Thanks for the compliment and I do typically try to look at all things from > various points of view and avoid extremes, making statements I can't back up > and I try to make sure I point out that I am putting forward a personal > opinion when I do say something I know others disagree with. > > I am also not sure what Karim meant with his statement about the "guy who > said he would never touch an Apple device". I in fact sold him my > VictorReader Stream in 2009 when the iPod Touch Third Gen with Voiceover > came out. At the time the Booksense had also been recently released and I > bought a Booksense XT because I liked the additional features such as built > in FM Tuner, Bluetooth support and built-in 4 Gigs of storage. However, when > the iPod Touch came out I bought a 64 Gig model and never looked back. A few > months later I sold my Booksense as well and a year later, in September 2010 > I bought an iPhone 4 and the 4S last October. My HTC with MobileSpeak and > MobileGeo went up on BlindBargains.com and found a new home somewhere out in > the eastern States and apart from my laptop and my desktops at my business > all I have now is an iPhone 4S and it does everything ZI want it to do > either beautifully or adequately. One of the things in the "adequately" > category would be GPS, but I have no doubt this will improve and be on par > or better than MobileGeo in short order.I used to be worried about listening > to Daisy Audio Books, but after I bought the iPod Touch I also subscribed to > Audible and I happily pay for my books now because he benefits of their > awesome selection along with the quality of readers and ease of use is worth > it to me and the odd audio book I may get from the CNIB here in Canada on a > CD I can easily grab just the MP3 files and convert them to the iTunes audio > book format with Chapter and Verse. > > I continue to say and stand behind my statement that I believe for a blind > person in my situation the PC with Windows 7 and Jaws is a better solution > than a Mac with Voiceover would be. I have been a Jaws user for 23 years and > use it with speech only, never used a braille display and I do stuff like > email, browsing, Excel and so on so fast and I think efficiently that I see > absolutely zero reason to switch. Windows 7 is stabil and a very good OS and > despite all the complaints about Jaws and remarks how bad a piece of > software it is, let's not forget that Jaws has been around for 25 years and > has continuously evolved and just like Windows become a lot better. I am not > a software engineer and most people who say Jaws is bad software probably > are not either so I don't think it's so bad, Jaws 13 rarely crashes for me > and with a few exceptions it's fast and responsive and I don't begrudge > Freedom Scientific the $200 I pay every 2 years to maintain my SMA and get > the next 2 major updates and all smaller ones in between, after all, they > don't have over 100 Billion of cash like Apple who could afford to keep > Voiceover going as a hobby if they wanted and put more people on the project > than Freedom Scientific could on Jaws. > > There will always be a few people on a list with over 1,300 people who are > fanatic about a certain product, think it's fun to bash others or simply be > negative or contrary in other ways. I rarely find truly new revelations > about my iPhone on here, but I do enjoy sharing what I know and I'm glad a > lot of people on here think the same way because I could think of about 20 > people who, should they leave this list, would make it 80% less useful to > all others. > > > Regards, > Sieghard > -- Christopher (CJ) chaltain at Gmail -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en.
