macOS

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10.10.2 Update

The latest update to Yosemite, 10.10.2, is now live. It claims to fix wifi bugs and other assorted problems, including VoiceOver. With the exception of the two bugs encountered when typing in edit fields on webpages and the inability to play audio iMessages, I have to say that I've found nothing new or fixed in terms of VoiceOver, as much as I hate to write that. See the list of bugs at the bottom of this post. There is a note next to some of them, indicating if it is fixed or could not be tested/reproduced.

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If you’re like me, there’s no way you can resist reading an article with a title like 5 TECH STANDARDS APPLE MURDERED AND 5 MORE ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK.

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Barely a month after announcing new iPhones, Apple Pay and the Apple Watch, Apple CEO Tim Cook will be back on stage tomorrow to announce more new products … just in time to grab a share of your money this Holiday season.

However, unlike the September event, this will be much more low-key. To be staged on Apple’s Cupertino campus and with a much shorter invitation list, it seems extremely unlikely that any major surprises are in store.

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Since owning my iPhone I have found a world of apps, information and services which I thought that I would never have access to. I am sure any one reading this who is familiar with the accessibility of iOS and Mac will know exactly what I mean, but if you are new to AppleVis or the accessibility of such devices, having a built-in screen reader which gives me access to anything including news, travel, cloud-storage, sat-nav services and audio books to name a few is simply life changing.

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Below is the AppleVis live blog for the June 8, 2015 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) keynote presentation. Information has been taken directly from the @AppleVis Twitter timeline, as well as from the Twitter timelines of MacRumorsLive / MacRumors, Macworld, and 9to5Mac.

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Welcome to Sierra

Today, Apple released a free update to its Mac computers: macOS Sierra. Apart from the new name for this version (Sierra), you'll notice that Apple has re-branded the entire line of the Mac's operating system. No longer is it OS X; it's macOS, to line up with tvOS, watchOS, and iOS. As always, this is a free upgrade, available to anyone with a supported Mac. And, again as always, we urge you to back up important files before upgrading, just in case.

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Apple has today released macOS 14 Sonoma to the public. As usual, we won’t cover the mainstream features here, concentrating instead on what's new and changed for blind and low vision users. For an overview of the mainstream changes, we recommend this in-depth review by MacStories.

Please remember to check the section about bugs to see if now is the right time to upgrade. There’s no harm in holding off a few weeks or months to let Apple address a problem you may find too disruptive to deal with.

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I found a cure for the pandemic lockdown blues. Online shopping. I started clicking the buy button back in early November, bogging down Safari with megabytes of product page HTTP cookies. But after buying gifts for my spouse and grandson, I found it difficult to stop.

I felt a sudden urge to buy the iPhone SE 2020. I mean, that iPhone XR stretching the lining of my pocket just seemed so heavy. And how could I sleep at night knowing I could never upgrade my 2012 MacBook Pro to Big Sur? Clearly, it was time for a new Mac.

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When I made it to the twelfth grade, I had already taken a couple different music classes (piano and choir), and was looking for something new to try my hand in. I ended up in a class that taught audio production and music technology. It was quite a small class, and there was only one other person in it besides myself.

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In the Summer of 2011 I was preparing to return to college for the first time in over 20 years, and the first time ever as a blind student. I hoped to be able to use my 11 inch Macbook Air for all of my schoolwork, but lots of folks cautioned I would not be able to succeed without having access to MS Office and other Windows-based applications. While I had an intimate working knowledge of many Microsoft products from 20+ years spent in corporate IT, I only knew them from the perspective of a sighted person.

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Intro

Since 2005, I have used a variety of Macs, and have regularly used every version of macOS from Tiger to Monterey since then. Over that time, I’ve witnessed the various changes to VoiceOver, both major and minor, as well as how VoiceOver on macOS helped usher in a whole new world of mobile accessibility on iOS and iPadOS.

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My Top Ten Accessibility Wishes for OSX 10.10

With WWDC coming up on June 2, we are very probably about to find out what iOS8 and OS X 10.10 will contain. AppleVis already has an article about our hopes for iOS 8 and Jonathan Mosen wrote up an iOS8 wish list of his own that is well worth a read, but no one has yet put forth a list of their hopes and dreams for OS X 10.10.

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It’s that time of year. With WWDC just one week away, Apple is getting ready to announce new versions of iOS and OS X, as well as possible tvOS and watchOS updates. While concrete information about these future releases is scarce, speculation and feature wish lists have begun popping up on mainstream tech websites.

Here are my top wishes for VoiceOver improvements in the next iteration of the Mac operating system, presumably OS X 10.12.

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In case there was any doubt I'm a nerd, I recently set up WordPress v4.9.5 on my web server. WordPress is a free open source Content Management System (CMS) commonly used for blogging.

I know, the average AppleVis reader doesn't run their own web server or configure their own local WordPress site. Most use WordPress.com. Pros and cons to both approaches are described in this article comparing WordPress.com to DIY WordPress.

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In her latest song, "Shake it Off," the country/pop artist Taylor Swift wrote, "...the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate." While I am sure that Ms. Swift was not referring to some peoples’ recent comments about Apple's commitment to accessibility when she wrote the song, the basic idea behind that particular phrase still applies.

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Hello everyone, With the release of Mac OS X Mountain Lion having been announced for tomorrow, we thought the time was right to bring you some exciting news. David Woodbridge has put together a series of podcasts demonstrating the new features (including accessibility) of Mountain Lion, and these podcasts will be available tomorrow once Mountain Lion is released. So, if you're curious about Apple's next-generation operating system for the Mac, check back tomorrow!
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The wait will soon be over for those itching to get their hands on OS X Mountain Lion, the next-generation operating system for Apple's Mac line. According to 9 to 5 Mac, In Apple's Q3 financial earnings press release, CEO Tim Cook announced that OS X Mountain Lion would be available tomorrow, July 25, 2012. “We’re thrilled with record sales of 17 million iPads in the June quarter,” Cook said. “We’ve also just updated the entire MacBook line, will release Mountain Lion tomorrow and will be launching iOS 6 this Fall.
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Today is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), and we are asking everybody to use this as an opportunity to reach out to iOS and OS X developers - to either encourage them to make their applications accessible and usable by the vision-impaired; or to show your appreciation for applications which already are.

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Intro

Today, Apple held what is probably its final live event of the year: "One More Thing". True to its title, this announcement consisted of one thing: the M1, Apple's first custom chip, and the new Macs that will be powered by it.

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A Brief History

I got my first iOS device, an iPod Touch (fourth generation), for Christmas in 2010. I was resistant at first, but eventually warmed up to it and grew to rely on it more than the braille notetaker I had used for over eight years. Given that positive experience with Apple, and all the comments about VoiceOver on the Mac I'd been hearing, I decided to give the Mac a shot. In 2011, I purchased the cheapest Mac I could, a low-end Mac Mini.