[Nfb-krafters-korner] PC Vs. Mac

[Terrence van Ettinger]

Hi Cathy,
I'm actually typing this on a 6-year-old Mac running OSX Tiger--a 6- 
year-old OS! '-) Though before I got  this one about 2 months ago I  
had a 1-year-old MacBook Pro running OSX Lion. There is a quickstart  
tutorial that comes up the first time you run VoiceOver (the screen  
reader), and it walks you through all the different commands. It  
actually has you do each command or set of commands before you move  
on to the next section. The voice on the newer Mac OSes is quite  
understandable, vastly improved from older speech synthesizers. (Can  
you tell I miss my MacBook? LOL) Anyway, the one main difference in  
how VO works compared to PC screen readers is that it has a sort of  
top-down way of showing the screen. For example, in the web browser,  
you see a toolbar and an HTML content area. To work with the items on  
the toolbar, you "interact" with the toolbar, and then you can  
navigate around the various options. Same goes for the HTML content  
area when you're looking at the web page. I personally like it  
because it's very focused--you don't just see a whole screenful of  
text, but the sections of the screen are clearly defined.

Terrence
On Sep 5, 2012, at 1:25 PM, Cathy wrote:

> Hello folks,
>
> I have a PC and have had PC's since way back in the dos days. never  
> had a
> Mac. I wondered what the learning curve is for the Mac? Is the  
> speech a
> separate thing that must be learned along with learning how to use the
> operating system? Are there tutorials for blind folks to learn the  
> Mac out
> there? I'm thinking of getting a Mac next time I need a computer.  
> IPhones
> sound wonderful, I've seen people using them and I'm very  
> impressed, but I
> can only get one if I win the lottery. Unfortunately, since I don't  
> play the
> lottery, the IPhone is not in my future. <sigh regretfully>
>
> Cathy
> .
>
>
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