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Apple unveils new accessibility features

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Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#371

Post by jkman »

jaybeavers wrote: post #338
mistersquid wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your concerns are completely nonsensical. With all due respect, my concerns are not nonsensical but borne of my daily use with Apple Vision Pro and my awareness of the limitations of dwell control. Iterating on this idea with a device lighter than Apple Vision Pro and improvements to dwell control would likely be required before this could ship to larger populations of disabled users, but that is not what is depict…

You are correct, the driving controls in AVP don’t use dwell, that is the wrong (and dangerous) approach. They use something more akin to hover activation. It’s the hardware I designed coupling the power wheelchair to the AVP, and I’ve driven it myself.

Your work is incredible, best of luck going forward!

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#372

Post by bonoboTP »

djeastm wrote: post #369
bonoboTP wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a course in speed reading, learning to read straight down the middle of the page, and I was able to go through War and Peace in 20 minutes. It’s about Russia.

Isn't that a Woody Allen joke?

Indeed

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#374

Post by rprwhite »

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…

My primary issue with the TouchBar, losing the F keys was a concern but lot my primary one, was that it required me to look at it to use it. With keys you can feel them, and learn their place. But, the TouchBar had me looking at it and not the screen to do something. If it was angled so I could see it in my periphery whilst looking at the screen it would been awesome.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#375

Post by tskj »

troupo wrote: post #360
JeremyHerrman wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What are you on about, wireless charging is great, and using the magnet to hang my phone is also great. If that goes away I might have to consider switching phones!

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#376

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

troupo wrote: post #360
JeremyHerrman wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.*

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#377

Post by troupo »

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 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, but that's a miracle in Cook's Apple.

> wireless charging is viewed as a flop?

I was referring to AirPower. Announced, never shipped. I should've looked up the name for it. Otherwise yes, wireless charging has been used everywhere, and Apple was just one of very last holdouts to implement it.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#378

Post by tskj »

kdheiwns wrote: post #337
rigrassm wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, judging by the info I read on the website now, it seems to be focused on using AI assistance. Not going to lie, it deeply worries me how quickly society is just accepting offloading what used to be meaningful human interactions to AI. I hate to imagine what a society looks like once the people in it solely rely on AI for navigating life. Sorry for the bleak reply. I was genuinely excited to read about the serv…

I see it less bleakly and in a more hopeful manner. For people who signed up to help, I guess it might've felt like a social thing. But I imagine most of the people who relied on the services were looking less for the social aspect and wanted more independence in life. There are probably loads of blind people who are very thankful that they're increasingly able to go outside and live fully functional lives thanks to…

Reminds me of the quote (paraphrased):

> We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for, I don't know.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#379

Post by troupo »

virgil_disgr4ce wrote: post #376
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'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.

Re: Apple unveils new accessibility features

#380

Post by troupo »

plufz wrote: post #322
prepend wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But wasn’t that just a setting changing it to default to fn? It was some time since I last used them…

> But wasn’t that just a setting changing it to default to fn

They relented and added this settings two years in, IIRC. It wasn't there from the start

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