[nabs-l] Macs Verses PCs

[Greg Aikens]

Hi Brianna,
You can have Apple install the iWork suite on your mac when you purchase it.  That will give you access to word documents, excel spreadsheets, and power point slides, all of which are compatible with iWork.  It cost around $40 to get the software when I bought mine.  

The other popular option, which is free, is to use Open Office.  I have not tried this but I hear it is reasonably accessible.  Microsoft Office for mac is not accessible though.  

I agree that having access to a braille embosser could be very important for math.  If that is a deal breaker for you, then maybe mac isn't the way to go.  If that's the only thing holding you back then talk to others who have tried to produce braille with the mac.  I have never tried.  

I know a lot of people make the switch from windows to mac because they hate windows or jaws or something, but the reason I switched was purely financial.  I didn't have an open case with a rehab agency and I needed something to start the semester with.  If you have help from voc rehab and they are willing to pay for jaws an jaws is what you are used to, I can't think of any major compelling reason to switch.  It will require some significant time and learning to become comfortable on a new system, and you might not want to be doing that on top of everything else.  But, if you are adventurous and you love to try new stuff, go for it.  

Like I said before, I love my mac.  I just don't want to be unrealistic about the time involved to learn a new system or the current drawbacks on the mac side.  

-Greg
On Mar 5, 2011, at 6:31 PM, Brianna Scerenscko wrote:

> I mean does it come with the softwhere to do things like Powerpoint,
> Excell, and Word already in it? I will have a Braille Note note taker
> that I can use as a Braille Display. I was told that I would need a
> braille embosser in college because of math.
> 
> On 3/5/11, Greg Aikens <gpaikens at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Joe,
>> I have been able to accomplish everything I need to do with Pages, the word
>> processor in iWork.  You can save and apply different styles, change the
>> spacing, font, alignment etc.  Very little of this is done in a similar way
>> to the way it is done with Jaws though.
>> 
>> When you mention tables, comments, and track changes, you hit on the few
>> things that iWork and voiceover don't do well.  You can access the content
>> of tables in Pages, but only by copying them and pasting them into a
>> document in Numbers, the spreadsheet program.  You can read and see the
>> various comments and changes, but it is completely disconnected from the
>> body of the text, making them almost useless.
>> 
>> Hopefully the next release of iWork will fix these problems.
>> 
>> -Greg
>> On Mar 5, 2011, at 4:58 PM, Joe Orozco wrote:
>> 
>>> I'd be curious to know what the level of flexibility is when it comes to
>>> the
>>> word processor.  Someone once told me that in order to find out things
>>> about
>>> underlining, justification and so on, you had to paste the text to the
>>> system's text editor because the information was not readily available on
>>> iWork.  Can you use styles in the same way you can with MS Word?  What
>>> does
>>> table navigation look like, and how easy is it to review and edit
>>> documents
>>> using comments, footnotes, revision histories and the like?  One good
>>> thing
>>> about Mac OSX is the availability of several full word processors as
>>> opposed
>>> to just the Office package for which JAWS scripts have been optimized,
>>> though to be fair I'm not sure how many of these Mac options are
>>> accessible
>>> with VoiceOver.  Sorry to use the thread to pose my own questions, but
>>> I've
>>> been curious.
>>> 
>>> 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
>>> 
>>> 
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