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Apple unveils new accessibility features

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Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#381

Post by chocochunks »

vkou wrote: post #362
pasc1878 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would note that Steve Jobs would have probably supported removing the F keys. See the NeXT keyboards - no F keys. http://xahlee.info/kbd/NeXT_computer_keyboard.html The ones with the command key beneath the space were nice - except for the help key being so prominent.

Steve Jobs also thought that the abomination that was that stupid circular mouse was the pinnacle of UX. Requiring the use of two hands in order to right click is also a fascinating hill to die on. I'm surprised that the operation didn't also require a foot pedal, all to, presumably, not confuse their users with the inclusion of a second button on their mice.

What's wild is they STILL haven't built a mouse with two switches for clicking. Right clicking is on all their mice/trackpads faked with things like touch sensors. They are just dead set against it for some reason even though it does actually mean it's impossible to play something like a modern FPS* with a Magic Mouse.

* With the default control scheme anyways.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#383

Post by rjrjrjrj »

codebje wrote: post #321
rjrjrjrj wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't like it, and was happy when they got rid of it. But I didn't hate it. I did hate the butterfly keyboard that was introduced at the same time. Probably Apple's biggest hardware mistake of the past 15 years or so.

I am fortunate enough to have both a butterfly keyboard MBP and a touch bar MBP. Obviously the butterfly keyboard has the known issues, but the touch bar MBP also has the very common issues with that hardware. I can replace the butterfly keycaps myself. It's something like $10 from aliexpress for a full set of keycaps and clips and a minute's work to pop the busted one and replace it. Annoying, but not fatal. The tou…

The butterfly keyboard's known issues resulted in a huge recall.

The touch bar didn't fail at anywhere close to the same rate, although yes... it was expensive to fix if it did fail.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#384

Post by crazygringo »

prepend wrote: post #268
postalcoder wrote: post #64

One thing Apple really needs to get right is speech to text transcription. They've nailed accessibility in so many ways and yet it feels like they're a decade behind on properly transcribing voices. At least half a decade. Input on the iPhone is so dreadful nowadays. Their palm rejection is definitely worse than before, so mistyping is more frequent. Their text-correction algorithm for typing is worse than before, an…

I turned off my iphone’s autocorrect because it made too many stealth errors. Now I notice all my mistypes. I have a friend named Zi in my contacts. For some reason ios kept autocorrecting “I” to “Zi” and would do it too far back for me to notice. What’s weird is how this is such a dumb bug that Apple usually irons out.

I seriously wish there were a way to turn off access to contacts, for both autocorrect and dictation.

It drives me nuts the number of times it misinterprets some common word as a name I have in my contacts.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#385

Post by rgovostes »

JeremyHerrman wrote: post #168

Apple loves to stealth test new tech in full public view by sneaking it into relatively mundane places, so debuting agentic AI via accessibility is very on brand. A few other examples: - The Touch Bar was much more than an OLED strip, it was Apple’s first move in the transition to Apple Silicon on macs. The Apple T1 chip in the 2016 Touch Bar MacBooks was the first solely Apple-designed processor to appear in a Mac a…

Apple Vision Pro's hand tracking was first alluded to in a section of their first machine learning research publication. It was about using GANs to add realistic sensor noise to synthetic datasets. The bulk of the article is about eye tracking.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#387

Post by moralestapia »

troupo wrote: post #377
gsquaredxc wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you confuse long-term planning with long-term success. Just because something is meticulously planned doesn’t guarantee the plan wasn’t flawed fundamentally. Additionally, wireless charging is viewed as a flop? MagSafe (wireless) is a really strong product option. Lightning vs USB-C doesn’t matter, no need to fiddle with anything in the dark, etc. MagSafe for mounting in a car is also a strong offering. Most…

> I think you confuse long-term planning with long-term success. No. Long-term planning presupposes actual planning and execution, including failure modes, usage patterns etc. There's markedly less and less of that under Cook's leadership. Oh, by the way. You can't really have long-term meticulous planning when everything is on an artificially enforced yearly cycle. The hardware division has mostly emerged unscathed,…

4 trillion dollars disagree, though.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#388

Post by dylan604 »

troupo wrote: post #379
virgil_disgr4ce wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gonna echo the sibling comment here because you're conflating different things. The point is that all of these seemingly weird things that were sometimes failures were part of more or less elaborate plans, and most importantly, that *commercial success for any given feature was not necessarily the purpose of the plan.*

You're conflating what I wrote with "you're talking about commercial success". Broken keyboards shipped for years, "we didn't think about thermal throttling", "we have no working replacement for a widely used professional machine", and "hey, here's this half-assed redesign that we still can't properly fix after release" have nothing to do with either commercial success or meticulous planning.

The keyboard issue was prolonged only by the nature of Apple's hardware release cycle. When the keyboard was released to the public, the next gen hardware was already way into the design/build cycle that it could not just be replaced. The fact they even had time to put the condoms under each key for the next year's model was surprising to me. They wanked the plug on the keyboard faster than I've seen them yank any hardware design.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#389

Post by bookofjoe »

RobMurray wrote: post #235
bookofjoe wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for me! Both pairs of Metas are now inoperative because I can't get them back to factory reset. Once you pull that little blue tab out of them when they're new, it's GAME OVER.

There is a factory reset procedure, I think you hold the shutter button while switching them off and on again.

Doesn't work for me, as I noted above.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#390

Post by troupo »

moralestapia wrote: post #387
troupo wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you confuse long-term planning with long-term success. No. Long-term planning presupposes actual planning and execution, including failure modes, usage patterns etc. There's markedly less and less of that under Cook's leadership. Oh, by the way. You can't really have long-term meticulous planning when everything is on an artificially enforced yearly cycle. The hardware division has mostly emerged unscathed,…

4 trillion dollars disagree, though.

That's such a non-argument that I struggle to even comment on it.

By this measure Microsoft is the most meticulously planned company in history with a spotless track of achievements.

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