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Apple unveils new accessibility features

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Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#261

Post by skygazer »

hedora wrote: post #178
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…

Until siri can reliably handle "Navigate to ", offline and using pre-downloaded maps, I'm going to assume all the other, harder speech to text and conversational stuff is just vaporware. I found another dreadful iPhone input "feature" yesterday. If you are browsing around in third party carplay apps, and ready to tap your selection, but instead press the accelerator first, it truncates the list to only a few items, a…

I think their intent is actually safety. They employ two touch interaction models: Flexible while not moving and simplified while driving. For instance, keyboard input becomes unavailable while moving and you must rely on Siri. I personally find it irritating, particularly when I am a passenger, but I get it.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#263

Post by js2 »

thrownthatway wrote: post #159
UltraSane wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I briefly worked at a call center and I would hear supervisors listening to recorded calls at warp speed.

> boiler call center What does this mean?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler_room_(business)

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#264

Post by prepend »

mjamesaustin wrote: post #196
SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man I miss the touch bar. Never got why people hated it so much

The hate was because it replaced function keys many people use by tactile touch, without looking. Doing the same on a touch screen is very difficult. If the bar had been added on top of those, I don't think there would've been the same kind of hate for it.

Even without tactile elements it was two keys to use function keys.

I would have been fine with the touchbar if it just default displayed function keys. Hitting fn+f5 to quicksave is annoying.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#265

Post by Melatonic »

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…

Was "LiquidMetal" anything more than a good aluminum alloy ?

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#266

Post by RobMurray »

isityettime wrote: post #54
bitwize wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard textual description tracks on television programs before. They come fast, but not screen-reader fast. To the untrained ear a blind person's screen reader sounds like when you somehow get the TI-99/4A's speech synthesizer to read from invalid memory.

The audio description tracks are a different genre than screenreadera perform. They're acting, by actors, carefully written and performed to fit into the gaps in the dialogue while preserving the mood and flow of the show. I think speeding them up or making them robotic would ruin them, while both of those traits are actually desirable for screenreaders.

Ideally that is what AD should be like. too often you set the volume right for a movie so the characters can be heard, then the AD is like an insanely boomy voice that shakes the room. Plus for some reason the also turn the movie audio down, as if that would be necessary.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#267

Post by RobMurray »

kube-system wrote: post #169
lern_too_spel wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These features have existed on Android devices for years. What Apple does best is marketing. https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android... https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2024/09/talkback-u...

I think the above person was making a commentary about the things Apple chooses not to do. Apple strategy is often to be intentionally last to market, after the dust settles.

Apple was first to market with Voiceover. Google took a very long time to come close to catching up.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#268

Post by prepend »

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.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#269

Post by prepend »

Invictus0 wrote: post #179
titzer wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple dictation on MacOS is actually pretty dang good. I've got it bound to a double-tap on fn and I use it pretty regularly.

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.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#270

Post by kube-system »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #258
kube-system wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the above person was making a commentary about the things Apple chooses not to do. Apple strategy is often to be intentionally last to market, after the dust settles.

The dust settled on these accessibility features years ago. Why would Apple choose not to do these things? Live captions in particular is useful even for those who are not hard of hearing because it lets people watch uncaptioned videos in environments that are too noisy or that need to be quiet.

By "dust settled" I don't mean that the technology "exists" -- but rather that feature development has slowed down and most products have stabilized as feature complete and mature.

The on-device ML models that are being used by Google and Apple are both quite new and in active development.

Many of Apple's most successful products have shipped years or even a decade after their competitors. They have tried using first-mover advantage in the past but typically fail when using that strategy.

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