Comparing apples (apple) and oranges (windows) - What would you like me to look at?

I think that it would be more closer to do iPad versus surface comparison, because both of them have a touchscreen

Hey Oliver,

Your idea sounds fantastic!

While your list of suggested topics is already comprehensive, I have an additional suggestion for you to consider. I think that it would be highly valuable if you could explore the initial 'onboarding' experience for individuals who rely on screen readers and are new to the platform. Specifically, I'm referring to any insights into the user experience within the first 30 minutes of use, right after pressing the power button for the first time. How does this initial onboarding process compare across the different platforms? Are there any discernible differences in the time required and the overall user experience when performing tasks like sending the first email or visiting the first website on each device?

I believe that your insights into this particular aspect would greatly benefit anyone contemplating a switch to one of these three platforms, as the onboarding experience can play a pivotal role in shaping initial perceptions and user satisfaction.

I'm looking forward to reading about your experience and observations!

Maybe compare all devices, battery, life, and technical specifications, compare to the battery life and the specifications that you got.
You can fund the specifications on Apple’s and Microsoft websites, and then you can compare them to your own experience.
If I want to compare my Acer laptop, which doesn’t have a touchscreen compare to my MacBook M1 and my iPad 2018, the Mac M1 probably would we, since I can’t even put the Acer laptop into recovery mode.
The iPad six only got 32 GB of storage, but the MacBook got like 512 GB SSD

Hi Oliver. I’ve recently moved back to Windows because I was noticing I was becoming so frustrated with Apple so often that I was becoming hesitant and resistant to even trying new things or even doing things I knew would be a major hassle. The place I noticed it most was the internet. Maybe you don’t have that same frustration leading to avoidance but if you do, maybe you could comment on whether you notice it getting better on a different platform. Internet browsing is something I find so frustrating on apple devices that I just don’t do it unless I have no choice and even then I go into it almost scared of the potential hours of frustration to get a simple thing done. On Windows this is starting to go away as I don’t encounter so much frustration. I’m not saying Windows doesn’t have its problems, the web has become a bit of a Wild West with accessibility left in the dust but Safari doesn’t do a good job of making what is accessible easy to do. How are you finding web browsing on the different platforms?

The only issue with that is that if you have the latest mac, it's going to be the fastest, from my understanding, where as windows has diffirent processors you can get built in.

I think you're going to find your windows experience to be a very posative one.

I've not used ITunes in years but from what I understand; it is a bit clunky on windows so be prepared for that.

Hi Oliver,
The surface Go possibly wasn't a great choice. I've heard that some Surface laptops have issues with the sound card; your screen reader might cut out to conserve energy. Some sound cards apparently have this nowadays.
Check out this blog post. https://mosen.org/soundsfrustrating/
That article is a few years old, but judging by a recent comment on here about a Surface Pro laptop, things might not have changed. You would have been better going with an HP or Asus, apparently they're less likely to have sound issues in the most recent models. And Dell are really bad for sound too. Also, have you considered specs like CPU and RAM. You won't be able to get anything done with less than 8 GB RAM, but your Surface Go might have 16 GB? I've seen the specs for some of those, and they look pretty high. What screen reader will you be using? NVDA? JAWS? Narrator? I've used all 3 over the years. I'm on Windows 10, and Narrator is fully functional with improvements in Windows 11. I find Narrator better in some respects for word processing than JAWS is. But I find NVDA works best for my needs on a daily basis so I use it most of the time. Will you be comparing several browsers or just one? Brave and Chrome seem to be better than Edge. I find doing media stuff on Windows really isn't worth bothering with, I listen to podcasts and audio books exclusively on my iPhone and iPad. I think there's Pocket Casts for podcasts on Windows but you have to pay for that if you want it on multiple devices. The Microsoft Store for downloading apps is a joke. It's the most clunky thing I've seen. I very rarely use it. It might work better with Narrator though, I've only really tried it with NVDA and JAWS. Handling PDFs on Windows isn't so bad, you can open PDFs in Google Chrome or Word and they'll read OK most of the time provided they're text. What I like about Windows is that if one app doesn't work great for something, another app might do it better. Keep that receipt around for your Surface Go, you might need it. If it comes to that, look into HP or Asus.

I have 4 gb and get things done just fine.

Could I do with more, sure, but it's not slowing anything down.

Hi Brad,
In retrospect I had a notebook about 10 years ago with 4GB RAM, it wouldn't run smoothly with JAWS, but once I took JAWS off and put NVDA on there it worked much better. So it probably depends on what you want to do. And Oliver it might be worth you googling to find mailing lists for Windows for VI users (if there even is such a thing) or screen reader-based stuff. They might be able to advise you on what model of laptop you could get if the Surface Go doesn't work out. Hope I haven't put you off Windows completely lol.

You can compare macOS to Windows all you want, but if you really want to be fair and balanced in your comparisons, you'll need to compare the three major operating systems (yes, there are three, not two). Counting servers and datacenter computers, Linux is used on far greater machines than both Windows and macOS, and does offer some accessibility features for visually impaired users (like the Orca screen reader for graphical desktops or the various command-line screen readers available for text-mode consoles). And of course Linux has quite a large collection of software packages available as well that allow people to accomplish many of the tasks mentioned in the original post, like web browsing, word processing, e-mail and collaboration, calendaring, entertainment and media consumption, and more. If I could have three machines before me, one of those would be a computer running Linux. So I guess to include your offerings, I'd need four machines. But that's just fine.

Oliver, I’ve recently been researching 3d printing in hopes of getting into it. I have come across many hurdles and I think I’ve seen several of your posts in other forums related to the subject. I was a Windows and Android person my entire perfectly sighted life. Once I started losing my vision I switched over to the dark side as I personally feel that Apple nailed accessibility for people like me. Well, it’s not perfect I know but easier and not as buggy for me for sure. I still have a pc running nvda for when I don’t have a choice and must use a windows machine. Back to the slicers, I would love to pick your brain, and/or see a write up in the future. I have downloaded several slicers onto my Mac and have been playing around. I have found that Ultimaker Cura seems to work using voiceover although I don’t have a printer. I was able to hear all the tabs, menus, drop-downs, settings, etc. I was also able to download a file from thingverse and go through the motions of slicing it. That said, I do have some very limited remaining vision, use a 50” monitor at full magnification that I can’t read, high contrast dark theme with a pointer as big as I, a trackball, voiceover, and hover text that magnifies even more that I still can’t read. I grew up using a pc with a mouse and am just too dense to learn all the VO shortcuts but I am trying to put the mouse down. I could not get VO to work with Bambu or Prusa (beyond the initial app setup menus) even though they are both based off Cura. I’ve seen a couple comments in GitHub that notified both Prusa and Bambu of the issue on Windows Narrator/Ndva and added to them to include Mac with voiceover. The Bambu Handy app for iOS seems to be fully functional with VO, again I don’t have a printer to confirm but went through the motions. I have contacted Prusa, Bambu, and Creality but have only received responses from Prusa. The idea of a machine with LiDAR and Ai that calibrates, ensures the first layer is going down correctly, and recognizes spaghetti monsters has me totally excited to give it a whirl. In my opinion thus far, Bambu seems to be the closest to having a printer that is just simple and somewhat accessible. The rfid filament recognition and multiple filament system, cabinet, app, seem perfect…..if they could just get the slicer to work. The Prusa mk4 gets my second vote but the Wi-Fi is getting a bad rap for being so slow that it isn’t even functional and would definitely require sighted assistance to get it setup being as weird as it is. No one has commented on wired Ethernet though and I assume that works flawlessly. The cost after a cabinet and all is substantial. The comments I’m getting from Prusa are to find programmers that help the BVI crowd as the software is open source and submit any changes to Prusa for approval. The Creality K1 would have been my second choice but the reviews have not been stellar so I have not played with their slicer at all. Sorry to hijack this thread, but to see that you’re still working on 3d printing has motivated me.