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Apple unveils new accessibility features

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Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#351

Post by Danox »

gnatolf wrote: post #240
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…

'liquid metal' sounds cool. It's probably a metallic glass. I super dislike that it seemingly will be synonymous with the brand name by Apple even though that stuff has been around for decades. Not that there are particularly many places where this is used - mostly because it really is just very expensive. In the awesome position that Apple is in, economic feasibility is so much easier to achieve, with like tens of m…

You can buy shares in the company that makes and holds the patents on liquid metal they are currently a penny stock and have been for several years and at one time the shares sold for $23 a share at its highest point many years ago..

I don’t expect anything out of it, but I own 12,000 shares just for fun.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#352

Post by Danox »

bayindirh wrote: post #280
Melatonic wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's Titanium? That's cool - what's the name of the flash drive and or do you have more info ? Always loved titanium stuff

Nope, it's called/branded "Titanium". The thing was built from Liquid Metal. Image of the thing: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,wi...

LQMT Liquidmetal Technologies, Inc. A penny stock at this time.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#353

Post by pasc1878 »

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 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.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#354

Post by Danox »

terabytest wrote: post #78
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…

Wispr Flow is a masterclass in STT. Apple's solution feels like it's from the last century in comparison. Same applies with Apple's TTS when you have ElevenLabs and OpenAI running laps around it. All I need is for my iPhone to do those things natively at the same quality level (because in Apple's walled garden that's the only way to get them usable everywhere).

Is that in the clouds if it is that definitely isn’t Apple’s path… one can always look good when your device is plugged into a wall like a laptop, for example, built by some of Apple’s competitors but what happens when it can no longer phone home back to the mothership? never mind, I found the answer. See below.

Yes, Wispr Flow is a cloud-based application. All of your voice data, dictation, and contextual AI processing happen on remote external servers. It requires a constant internet connection to function and cannot be used offline. that definitely isn’t the path Apple wants to be on so far.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#355

Post by jkxyz »

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…

Removing the escape key is what bothered me most as someone using Vim keybindings. It made it feel very unpleasant to edit code because the Touch Bar had no physical feedback. I still have a visceral memory of how much I disliked touching the glass with my left ring finger.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#356

Post by Danox »

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

How many end users are going to pay $12 a month not many…

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#357

Post by klausa »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #298
tempodox wrote: post #227

Generated subtitles for video does sound useful. Sometimes actors mumble so horribly, I don’t understand a word they’re saying.

Wonder if it can translate it too. My biggest gripe with Netflix is that they only have like 3 languages and no auto translation. And even bigger gripe is that it's because of the union racket. They apparently need to pay hundreds of thousands for something computers do for free. Insanity.

It's licensing and/or product decision, not union labor.

I guarantee you for most (if not literally all) titles you see, they actually have more subtitles, they just don't / won't show them to _you_.

Netflix has gotten pretty good at VPN detection, but you used to be able to see this _very_ clearly by VPNing to a different country in the EU, and the available audio and subtitle languages changed dramatically.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#358

Post by djhn »

Danox wrote: post #348
socalgal2 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more strange given 60-70% of all app store revenue for Apple is games - see Epic vs Apple trial for data

The Apple store doesn’t do geek games casual games don’t count…

Casual games ≈ IAP gambling addiction abuse

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#359

Post by ngcazz »

jkxyz wrote: post #355
MBCook wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Removing the escape key is what bothered me most as someone using Vim keybindings. It made it feel very unpleasant to edit code because the Touch Bar had no physical feedback. I still have a visceral memory of how much I disliked touching the glass with my left ring finger.

That's how I moved on to reassigning caps lock to escape on my computers.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#360

Post by troupo »

JeremyHerrman wrote: post #295
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 underestimating Apple's meticulous planning, which has only become more intense in the Cook era. Bad feature/UX or not, each one of those decisions was calculated. Read this ars quote from 2010 [0]: >Apple used the small part—one that is not integral to the device’s functionality—to see if the company was capable or producing a custom design to Apple’s specifications. Typically, manufacturers prefer to have at…

> 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.

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