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Apple unveils new accessibility features

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Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#391

Post by troupo »

dylan604 wrote: post #388
troupo wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

> The keyboard issue was prolonged only by the nature of Apple's hardware release cycle.

You know that "meticulous planning" is supposed to include mechanical tests, catching edge cases etc. right? Instead, it persisted for 5 years with minor acknowledgements and minor changes.

It took them 3 years to put the "condoms" on, 4 years to add additional caps.

3 years after release Apple started offering free keyboard repairs to all users with a butterfly keyboard.

All that for a "meticulously planned" keyboard whose issues were immediately apparent within weeks of release.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#392

Post by righthand »

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.

Non-Apple Derangement Syndrome is strong with the brand.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#393

Post by theshrike79 »

jorvi wrote: post #290
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…

You're reading way too much into it. These are just failed attempts at commercializing something. - People hated the touchbar. Only years after it became liked, and only under tech enthusiasts that hacked and tweaked it to have much deeper functionality. - Making the ejector out of an expensive alloy made no sense. - Realitykit (and the Vision, which is also crashing and burning) is a solution looking for a problem.…

> - People hated the touchbar. Only years after it became liked, and only under tech enthusiasts that hacked and tweaked it to have much deeper functionality.

We hated the touchbar because it took away esc + f-keys.

If it had been on top of the F-key row, everyone would've loved it.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#394

Post by lossyalgo »

chocochunks wrote: post #381
vkou wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thankfully 3rd party devices are supported otherwise I'd have gone insane with just one button.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#395

Post by dwaite »

bdamm wrote: post #308
jorvi wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're reading way too much into it. These are just failed attempts at commercializing something. - People hated the touchbar. Only years after it became liked, and only under tech enthusiasts that hacked and tweaked it to have much deeper functionality. - Making the ejector out of an expensive alloy made no sense. - Realitykit (and the Vision, which is also crashing and burning) is a solution looking for a problem.…

You're misunderstanding how difficult it is to make major architectural changes to products the way Apple can. One of the ways to do it is to hide the architectural change as something else, something niche, and only when it has survived the fire of deployment there try to scale it up to the full market. It's actually quite genious, and you can expect more of it now that Apple's hardware guru is the chief. I can't he…

ML-related improvements to accessibility has been the trend for a couple of years now.

Changes which might not meet the quality bar to be a default user experience have a different calculus when they can be packaged up to be opt-in, and life-changing for certain people.

Global Accessibility Awareness Day also leads WWDC by a few weeks, so it serves as a taste of what Apple has been working on for the last year.

In terms of changes being led by a smaller feature, my favorite was night shift (which adjusted blue lighting at night) - which provided API months leading the first device with adaptive color adjustments from ambient light sensors.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#396

Post by dwaite »

MBCook wrote: post #302
jorvi wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're reading way too much into it. These are just failed attempts at commercializing something. - People hated the touchbar. Only years after it became liked, and only under tech enthusiasts that hacked and tweaked it to have much deeper functionality. - Making the ejector out of an expensive alloy made no sense. - Realitykit (and the Vision, which is also crashing and burning) is a solution looking for a problem.…

I liked the TouchBar. There were two problems with it: 1. It replaced the F keys. I suspect pros wouldn’t have complained so loudly if it didn’t. And it was too expensive for the cheaper computers where it may have been more popular. 2. They never changed it. Ok the first version wasn’t a big hit. Other than bringing back the escape key they never did anything . They sent it out to be a hit or to die and gave up ther…

I have never got into macros, so missing a row of function keys didn't impact me. A row of system integration actions (like dynamic volume and brightness controls) was nice.

However, a capacitive touch surface should not be so close to tactile buttons. This made it way more likely to falsely register actions.

Move it a half key width farther up and make it taller to have greater flexibility on how it uses the space and I think it would have been a much better feature.

IMHO the big problem is that the five year hardware cycle of the MBP is not conducive for revolutionary improvements. They had the MacBook back then, which would have been a great platform for faster design iterations.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#397

Post by wolvoleo »

DroneBetter wrote: post #344
wolvoleo wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 bothered me the most. A lot. And the stupid thing was that there was plenty of space for a row of function keys and the touch bar.

I don't think that's true, at least in the 13" model. and the F keys come back on the touch bar if you hold the fn button

Not on the 13" no but they could have made the touch pad slightly smaller.

For me touch keys will never work, like the other poster said I need tactile feedback. Apple's keyboards are pretty bad at that already by the way, even the return to scissor models. The only ones I find workable are the ones of 2015 and before.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#398

Post by Invictus0 »

prepend wrote: post #269
Invictus0 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

try wisprflow and then tell us it's good

Wisprflow is not $12/month better than ios. I’d much rather have “cheap, dependable, and good enough” over oligarch pricing for what used to be a one time software purchase any day.

you're just cheap

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#399

Post by apparent »

gsquaredxc wrote: post #367
troupo wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're underestimating Apple's meticulous planning, which has only become more intense in the Cook era "Meticulous planning" and then: butterfly keyboard, wireless charging, Mac Pro, Liquid Glass. And those are just off the top of my head.

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 the reference to wireless charging was to their rumored-but-never-released product that was going to allow charging at a distance, not mere magsafe charging.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#400

Post by prepend »

Invictus0 wrote: post #398
prepend wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wisprflow is not $12/month better than ios. I’d much rather have “cheap, dependable, and good enough” over oligarch pricing for what used to be a one time software purchase any day.

you're just cheap

The value just isn’t there for $12. This is just developers being greedy as their cost is nowhere near $12.

Compare this to other things and the value yielded is nowhere as near as better purchases.

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