[vicsireland] Apple Launch new OS
- From: "Ciaran Ferry" <research@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: vicsireland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 05 Sep 2009 17:32:58 +0100
Last week Apple launched the next incarnation of the Apple OS X operating
system, dubbed Snow Leopard (or OS X 10.6 for those of you who like to use
numbers). According to the guys over at Lioncourt.com, quite a number of
improvements have been made to Voiceover, Apples built-in screen reader.
For anyone interested, I have included a review of the new features below.
It costs just €29 to upgrade to the new OS, and a podcast describing the
process is at:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/bct/bct1380InstallSnowLeopard.mp3
On a related topic, Apple are offering a discount of between 6% and 10% off the
price of some of their products to students and teachers in 2nd or 3rd level.
Check out the following link for more info:
http://store.apple.com/ie/browse/home/education_routing?mco=MTE2NTI
Apple has struck a deal with eight academic institutions around Ireland to
enable students to get 10pc off the price of a MacBook or iMac and get a free
iPod Touch.
Sources close to the company said that a similar arrangement exists for parents
and teachers in second level and other third level institutions whereby
students and teachers can avail of a discount of between 6pc and 8pc on the
price of an iMac or MacBook and get a free iPod Touch.
The programme is open to 'educational individuals' everywhere and from today
computer hardware will come installed with the latest Snow Leopard operating
system.
Each machine will come with the iLive suite of applications that includes
music, photography, video and publishing software plus the iWeb content
management software.
The eight institutions that Apple has conducted the 10pc arrangement with
include: University College Cork, Dublin Institute of Technology, the Institute
of Art, Design and Technology in Dun Laoghaire, the National College of Art &
Design, St Patrick's College Drumcondra, Trinity College Dublin, University
College Dublin and Dublin City University.
http://www.lioncourt.com/reviews/mac-os-x-10-6-snow-leopard-with-voiceover/
Every year or two, another big cat bounds onto the Apple tech landscape in the
form of a major revision to its Mac OS X operating system. In the past, these
releases were brimming with shiny new features for both everyday and tech savvy
users to sink their teeth into. This time around, Apple did things a bit
differently. They made it plain that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard would not be a
version that was overflowing with new additions. Instead, they wanted to "press
pause" on new features, and spend some development time perfecting the already
impressively rich feature set of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Most of the changes,
they told developers and the press at their World Wide Developer Conference in
2008, would be under the hood, as it were.
Well, Snow Leopard’s here, and Apple may have understated things a little. In
respect to VoiceOver, OS X’s built-in screen reading solution for the blind and
visually impaired, they understated them a great deal more.
I’ll spend some time going over some of VoiceOver’s biggest changes in Snow
Leopard throughout this review. If you’re one of those folks who just wants to
cut to the meat of a review, I’ll give you that here. Quite simply, the update
to VoiceOver, now in its third iteration, is spectacular. It is, without a
doubt, the most significant update to the software to date, and at $29 USD to
migrate from Leopard, it’s unquestionably the most affordable major update to
any commercial screen reader in the history of access technology.
Through this review, I will be assuming a basic knowledge of VoiceOver, what it
is and what it can do. I will not be discussing anything, beyond what is new in
Snow Leopard.
It’s the Little Things…
Before we get into some of the heftier changes, let’s take a look at some of
the smaller changes that VoiceOver users are likely to notice early on, and
that will improve the VoiceOver experience tremendously, despite their size.
Faster Than a Speeding Bullet!
Apple boasts that Snow Leopard has been optimized for modern, Intel-based Macs,
and this shines through the entire system. The Responsiveness on my late 2006
MacBook (black) with a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 2 GB of RAM was frankly
amazing, and this of course spills over to VoiceOver as well. Everything about
the system is smoother and snappier.
A Sound Design…
Since the beginning, VoiceOver has used optional audio cues to provide the user
with a better and more productive experience. I’m a big fan of these. In the
same way that a sighted user can glance at an icon and recognize its function
more quickly than if he/she had to read some text, so too do audio cues provide
information in a faster, more succinct manner than if VoiceOver had to
articulate a description. In Snow Leopard, some of these audio cues have been
altered. If you’re familiar with the iPhone 3GS, you’ll recognize many of these
sounds, and the consistency between the two platforms is an excellent idea.
I’m not going to go through all these changes in minute detail, but I will draw
your attention to a few of the most significant.
Two of the audio cues that I was not a fan of in Leopard were the "page loaded"
sound in Safari, and the "boundary" sound, when the VoiceOver cursor can move
no further in a given direction. I felt that in Leopard, these sounds were
useful, but far too jarring for my taste. In Snow Leopard, these have been
replaced with subtler and more elegant sounds. Additionally, the "wrapping"
sounds have also been replaced, giving the audio cues a more coherent and
consistent feel.
You may recognize all of these sounds from the iPhone 3GS, where they have
essentially the same usage. Old habits die hard, they say, and apparently the
same is true for hardly adolescent ones. More than once, while working with
Snow Leopard, I’ve reached for my iPhone.
Smooth MOves
Easily my favorite of VOiceOver’s new smaller tricks is a feature called
"QuickNav". QuickNav provides, ironically, a quicker way to navigate with
VoiceOver, with the added bonus of only requiring a single hand. Pressing the
Left and Right Arrow keys together simultaneously toggles QuickNav on and off.
When it’s active, the arrow keys, pressed by themselves, behave as if you were
holding down the VoiceOver keys. (Control-Option). Pressing the combination of
Down Arrow-Right Arrow interacts with an item, while Down-Left Arrow stops
interaction. The Up Arrow-Down Arrow combination performs the default action on
an item, the same as VO-Space does. This is a feature that, half an hour after
I started using it, I was fully aware that the next time I had to sit down at a
Mac running OS X 10.5, I was going to miss it dearly. Apple, whoever it was on
the VoiceOver team that had this idea, give them a bonus.
Your Wish Is My Command
In Leopard, Apple introduced the NumPad Commander, a way of controlling
VoiceOver via the numeric keypad available on some Mac keyboards, or as
third-party USB devices. You could customize what commands were assigned to
which keys, and the feature was popular among many VoiceOver users,
particularly those on desktops.
Now, in Snow Leopard, Apple’s taken this idea to entirely new levels, and the
possibilities are limitless.
There are three commanders available to the VoiceOver user now: the NumPad,
Trackpad, and Keyboard Commanders. You can assign virtually any VoiceOver
command to a control in any of these, and then some. Apple’s provided the
ability to run applications, open files, launch Applescripts, and perform
Automator Workflows as well. Yes, you read that right. Script-writers, Apple’s
given you what you wanted. The ability to customize and script VoiceOver to
your heart’s content. Not only that, but the scripting is done with a mature
and powerful scripting language, for which there are endless resources and
examples online.
Among the commands available to assign to controls are several that do not have
VOiceOver key commands by default, such as a toggle to switch quickly between
DOM and Group modes while surfing the web.
The Trackpad
If you are one of those fortunate souls to have a MacBook or MacBook Pro with a
multi-touch trackpad, I envy you. Apple’s added the same functionality that has
proved so effective on the iPhone into Snow Leopard as well. You can control
VoiceOver and explore the currently active window via the trackpad, using the
same and/or similar gestures as you would on the iPhone. And, as it has on the
iPhone, I believe this new interface is going to truly alter the way we, as
visually impaired users, interact with our technology.
My MacBook sadly does not have a multi-touch trackpad, so I was unable to test
this feature. Having an iPhone, however, does give me some insight, and I can’t
imagine a more productive or intuitive way of using a computer. The first
chance I have, I’ll be upgrading to a newer MacBook, and this feature is one of
the reasons why.
Like with any Commander, you can assign gestures to specific actions if your
needs differ from the defaults.
Keyboard Commander
The Keyboard Commander provides additional keyboard shortcuts that VoiceOver
can utilize via one of the Option keys. You can choose whether it will use the
left or right Option key. Commands entered with the opposite key will still
behave normally.
By default, Apple’s predefined some extremely useful commands.
Option-T announces the date and time automatically via an Applescript. If you
have not enabled the "Allow VoiceOver to be controlled with Applescript"
feature in VoiceOver’s General preference page, this command will fall back to
the System Voice to announce the time. If Applescript support is enabled in
VoiceOver, however, VoiceOver will announce the time itself.
Option-U will blithely inform you of all that unread email that is building up
in your inbox, in much the same way that a sighted user can glance down at the
Mail icon on the Dock to get this information. In my case, I’m not wholly
certain this is a good thing.
Option-S and Option-M open or move to Safari or Mail respectively.
Surf’s Up!
Another area in which VoiceOver has been vastly enhanced is web browsing. Both
DOM and Group navigation methods have been improved substantially, and the
overall experience is superb.
Many new commands have been added for navigating by element types, (i.e. tables
and lists), and the improvement upon responsiveness of said navigation is
fantastic.
Rotors Can be Choosers
The Link Item Chooser has been replaced with what Apple’s calling the Web Item
Rotor, a clunky name, but an accurate one. The name not withstanding, this is
an excellent enhancement upon the Link Chooser, and provides for a tremendous
amount of flexibility and functionality. It can be activated with VO-U, just as
the Link Chooser was, and can be customized in the VoiceOver Utility in the Web
settings page.
Essentially, a variety of element types are available, which you can select
from by moving left/right through them. Which items are included in these types
is entirely customizable, but some possibilities include links, visited links,
frames, form controls, images, and many more.
Once you selected an element type, arrowing up/down will cycle through a list
of all the items of that type on the currently loaded page. What’s more, just
like in the Item Chooser, or the former Link Chooser, you can type a few
characters and shorten the list to only items which include them.
Traversing Tables
The one significant area in which VoiceOver was lacking in terms of web content
in Leopard was its way of dealing with HTML tables. In Snow Leopard, this
problem is gone, and APple has provided a plethora of ways in which the
experience can be customized, such as grouping items together in cells, (a must
as far as I’m concerned), the announcement of column and row numbers, etc. In
the main, tables behave precisely the way they do in applications like Mail or
iTunes. Interacting with a table allows you to move both vertically and
horizontally through the table cells, and the experience is both intuitive and
superior to anything I’ve seen from any other screen reading solution. Apple
hit this one out of the park.
Not Only Snow Leopards Have Spots
Similar to VoiceOver’s Hotspots, introduced in Leopard, you can now set as many
WebSpots as you like on web pages you frequently visit with VO-Command-Right
Brace. VoiceOver will remember all of these when you return to the site in the
future. You can then use VO-Command-Left/Right Brackets to move backward or
forward through your WebSpots.
If that isn’t enough, you can set a WebSpot to be the SweetSpot, and when a
page first loads, VoiceOver will automatically place you on it.
Still not enough? VoiceOver uses some advanced logic processing to determine
areas on the site that it thinks may be of particular interest. These "Auto
WebSpots" can be perused in the Web Item Rotor.
WebSpots can be removed at any time with VO-Command-Left Brace, so don’t
hesitate to experiment with them.
Tell Me a Story…
A long requested feature was for VoiceOver’s Read All feature, (VO-A), to
support web content. Well, now it does, and they’ve even added an additional
command to read from the beginning rather than from the current location of the
VoiceOver cursor, (VO-B). Like VO-A, VO-B is available in an applicable
situation, not just on the web.
And That’s Just the Beginning
There are countless changes, big and small, and enhancements to browsing on the
web, and I can’t possibly cover all of them here. I’ve tried to hit the big
improvements, but many of the things that make the biggest differences are not
easily articulated. For example, Groups mode works far better in Snow Leopard,
apparently due to a better method of determining the layout of pages. If you
are a fan of browsing the web with Groups mode, as I am, you will absolutely
love the tweaks Apple has made in that regard.
Customization
VoiceOver has an enormous number of ways in which to customize its verbosity.
By default, there are three general verbosity settings; high, medium, and low.
From there, you can adjust the speaking of individual attributes and controls,
and even reorder the items. If you prefer to hear a control’s type before
hearing its label, not a problem. If you want to hear that a checkbox is
checked before you hear that it is a checkbox, or don’t be want to be told it’s
a checkbox at all, it can be done.
If you’re the kind of user who likes to completely tailor your screen reading
experience to suit your taste, VoiceOver in Snow Leopard has enough to keep you
busy for hours.
"Give Me Labeling, or Give Me…"
Since VoiceOver’s inception, users have been asking for the ability o label
graphics and icons in applications that are not properly tagged. Apple’s
one-upped this request. In Snow Leopard, users can label, or even relabel, any
control type that may not be properly tagged in any application.
This means, of course, that applications with unlabeled buttons or other
controls, can be made more accessible by VoiceOver users.
MObilization
VoiceOver has a variety of methods by which users can export and import
preference files, either to move them to other machines or to share with other
users. Have you spent an afternoon labeling controls in your favorite
application and wish to share your work with the community? Export your labels
and other users can import them into their VoiceOver to be added to their own
labels. The same is true of verbosity settings, and virtually any other aspect
of VoiceOver.
Squash ‘em Bugs!
A tremendous amount of care has gone into insuring that the few remaining
accessibility-related bugs throughout Mac OS X have been eliminated. iChat now
works well, even when using Groups mode for web content, the AddressBook is now
a breeze to use, and most of the few unlabeled controls throughout OS X’s
various components and applications have been properly tagged.
A Few Quirks
Like any large software upgrade, there are bound to be a few quirks and some
rough edges that will be smoothed out over minor updates. So far, I’ve
encountered surprisingly few of these, likely due to the fact that Snow Leopard
is, in itself, largely a smoothing of Leopard’s rough edges.
iTunes still exhibits some erratic behavior while moving through the Sources
table, as it did in Leopard.
Once in a while, when moving through the Finder in the Columns view, you will
need to interact again with the Column Browser.
The Bottom Line
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard brings a host of improvements and enhancements to
VoiceOver that far exceed the $29 price tag in value. The additional
optimizations and new features of Snow Leopard make it not just a smart
upgrade, but a must-have for VoiceOver users.
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