[nabs-l] [nfbcs] Very Preliminary Impressions of the Mac

Thu May 13 18:03:34 UTC 2010

Hi Steve,

I am the only PC user in our office.  I get made fun of all the time for not
being one of the cool kids.  Aside from a worthy learning curve, I have not
seriously made a change up to this point because:

1. JAWS may have its quirks, but I have found more than 90 percent of the
applications I use are more than 90 percent accessible.  Those applications
that are not very accessible straight out of the download I have usually
found a script or two to rectify the issue.  I am worried that with a
built-in screen reader I am limited to what the manufacturer deems a core
essential.  Once I teach myself how to script I imagine I'll be able to
extend JAWS beyond its current ability.

2. I have major beef with Freedom Scientific, but I appreciate the updates
between major upgrades to address bugs.  Updates in Mac do not necessarily
mean updates in Voiceover.

3. Price.  With Apple you really are tied to a limited variety of laptops.
With a PC you can typically shop around and grab a decent system for well
below the Mac price range.

Now, as my exploration continues I may find these points are minor or maybe
even non-existent.  The Mac Book Pro I handled did not have the latest
update, and so perhaps some of my less favorable observations would have
been cleared up, and there is also the matter of the length of time I had to
play with the technology.  You're not going to fall in love with another
operating system in one day.  For now I can only say it was most definitely
not love at first sight.

MS Office is currently not accessible with the Mac, though this is supposed
to change later this year.  The same is true of Firefox.  I understand
Google Docs are also supposed to be already accessible with Voiceover and
Safari.  I can only offer that as hearsay as I did not even think to test
this while I was in front of the laptop.

I'll write more as I continue exploring.  My only pointer up to this point
is to find someone who can allow you to use the Mac at your own pace.  An
Apple store is not the best environment to test out a system.

Best,

Joe

"Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves,
some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all."--Sam Ewing 

-----Original Message-----
From: nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org 
[mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Steve Jacobson
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2010 11:51 AM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list; NFBnet 
NFBCS Mailing List
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] [nfbcs] Very Preliminary Impressions of the Mac

Joe,

This is good stuff, and I, for one, really appreciate you 
taking the time to share your experiences.  Do you know which 
version of the operating system you were 
using?  My understanding is that there have been improvements 
with respect to VoiceOver's method of handling check boxes and 
such in the latest version, I think 
10.7, but don't know the details.

>From what I gather, web browsing on the MAC is significantly 
enough different that it takes time to really understand how to 
deal with web pages effectively.  If I ever 
get the chance to really spend some time on the MAC, I would 
probably want to talk to some people experienced with the MAC 
to find out how they handle certain 
tasks.  I know that there are a few MAC users here as well and 
hope they chime in.  

Your point that MACs are different than PC's is a good one and 
I have found I have to be careful making assumptions.  For 
example, when my daughter got her 
MAC, she mentioned TextEdit.  I assumed that TextEdit was a 
text editor.  This seems like a reasonable assumption given the 
name, but as I'm sure you already 
know, it is not.  It is a reasonably powerful word processor 
that is included with the operating system.  As far as I can 
tell, it is a good deal more powerful than 
WordPad.  

What do your fellow employees use for word processing?  I am 
told that Open Office works reasonably well with VoiceOver but 
that Microsoft Word for the MAC 
does not.  

I also think that the issue of VoiceOver being included free is 
something potential buyers have to be careful of as a reason to 
choose a MAC over a PC.  It is 
included free, there is no doubt of that, and Apple should be 
commended for what they are doing.  However, it appears to me 
that you still pay a good deal more for 
a MAC than a PC, and while buying a screen reader for a PC will 
certainly wipe out the difference, the total cost of each 
becomes less of an issue in my opinion.  
You would be very hard pressed to buy a PC with JFW without 
paying a good deal more than you would pay for a MAC, but 
buying a PC with one of the less 
expensive screen readers might be cheaper in some cases and the 
accessibility you get could be similar to what you get with 
VoiceOver.  One really needs to 
decide if 
their interests and/or their environment make using a MAC the 
way to go.  Being able to make such a choice is a very positive 
step, though, and I am not minimizing 
that in the least.  It is very significant that we now have this option.

Thanks again for sharing this information.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Thu, 13 May 2010 10:23:38 -0400, Joe Orozco wrote:

>Hello,

>Earlier this week I had the privilege of handling a Mac Book 
Pro, iPad and
>iPhone, none of which I'd previously touched before.  These 
impressions are
>very preliminary and full of bias from a PC user.

>Mac Book Pro:

>I handled a 13-inch model, and the keyboard was fantastic.  I 
don't know
>that I would jump at the opportunity to switch from my current Dell
>Latitude, but if I had no other choice, the Mac Book Pro would not be a
>disappointment in the slightest.  Very solid hardware and 
sleek design.  I
>have long fingers, and the keyboard was sufficiently comfortable.

>Voiceover:

>The speech is excellent.  It is very human-sounding and did 
not distort with
>faster speeds.  Perhaps because the screen reader is built into the
>operating system, I did not hear any pauses or experience too 
many delays in
>accessing what I needed.  Where my admiration fell short was 
in the logic of
>the command structure.  When navigating in Safari, for 
example, I used the
>VO keys plus Left and Right arrows to navigate hyperlink by 
hyperlink.  I
>understand there are different modes to navigate web pages, 
but I somehow
>enjoy the JAWS capacity to jump in different blocks with 
greater flexibility
>without the need to make adjustments.  I did not much care for 
having to
>copy and paste content from the iWorks processor to the text 
processor to be
>able to tell certain formatting attributes.  Finally, I was not keen on
>relying on VO keys as the central point to make what appeared to be the
>majority of all keystrokes.  On a PC I suppose it is enjoyable 
to interact
>more with a larger percentage of my keyboard.  Certain 
keystrokes on the Mac
>Book Pro felt awkward to perform with one hand.  Activating 
check boxes and
>selecting items from lists was awkward.

>iPad:

>I wasn't a fan.  The Kindle is more compact, boasts a physical 
keyboard and
>to me just seems much more comfortable.  Both the iPad and 
iPhone use the
>same screen reader the Victor Reader Stream uses.  
Disappointing.  I somehow
>thought these two products also used the Alex voice, but 
perhaps this is
>simply processor capacity?  To me the iPad felt like a netbook 
with a touch
>screen.  I did not much care for connecting a bluetooth 
keyboard for more
>comfortable typing.  Portability seems to me the main driving 
motivator to
>get an iPad, and as far as portability is concerned, the iPad fell very
>short of my expectations.

>iPhone:

>I sucked at using it in the very short length of time I had to 
play with it.
>Yet, someone demonstrated how she could easily navigate and 
interact with
>e-mail.  I don't know that I appreciated the size of the 
device, think the
>Samsung Moment running Android feels more comfortable in my 
hand.  Yet, the
>iPhone very clearly beats the Android seven ways to Sunday in terms of
>accessibility.  If you can figure out the touch screen, it may 
very well be
>golden.

>So there you are, very basic impressions.  I plan to continue 
exploring the
>Mac alternative and hope other people contemplating a switch 
will also share
>their experiences moving from a PC environment.  If any of 
what I've written
>here is wrong or misleading, please correct me, because it may 
well have
>been my own ignorance.  If you do play around with Mac products, just
>remember it's true that Mac systems are no PC.  Accept the alternative
>platform for what it is.

>Joe

>"Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up 
their sleeves,
>some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all."--Sam Ewing
> 

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