Mike, Yeah, the pod casts are great & they helped a lot. I stand by my comments. I think that spirit of misplaced loyalty has led to blind-folks not questioning their adaptive product vendors enough to promote reasonable prices & services. That old argument of "it is a small market, hence the high prices," just doesn't wash anymore. I think some of the younger users just don't know how great their access to all this technology really is.
But, I agree that Apple is trying to keep a lock on their products. On one hand, it is somewhat limiting. On the other hand, it makes good business sense & that is the capitalist spirit that has made this nation great. Well, it has made Apple great @ any rate. I mean who can forget a few summers ago, when Apple had more money than the federal government. Unbelievable. Anyway, great job Mike &, please, continue to share your thoughts, experiences, & conclusions. Who knows, maybe you'll prompt a great Android rebellion….*smile* CJ On Jun 13, 2013, at 12:27 PM, Mike Arrigo <n0...@charter.net> wrote: > Awesome, glad you found the pod casts helpful. Yes, I have written to Apple > with these suggestions. I think what it comes down to though is that Apple > wants complete control over the operating system and the user experience. If > they were to open up the platform in the ways I have mentioned, they would > lose some of that. While Android is certainly not perfect, that is the main > reason I use it for my mobile platform, I want complete access and total > control over my device, and you just cannot have that with IOS unless you > jail break. I'm probably a rare breed, I prefer android for my mobile > platform, but for the desktop platform, it's the mac all the way. > Original message: >> Mike, > >> Well thought out comments. Have you considered broaching these ideas with >> Apple? They might not listen, but nothing ventured…nothing gained. They >> stop listening to the customers & they'll find themselves just another tech >> company, like Microsoft. > >> BTB, still using your podcasts for an occasional refresher on OSX. Great >> job on those. In fact, you helped me make the switch & not one regret. > >> Cheers, > >> CJ > >> On Jun 10, 2013, at 9:57 PM, Mike Arrigo <n0...@charter.net> wrote: > >>> After looking at the new features of IOS 7, a few things are missing that I >>> was hoping Apple might have considered. Perhaps some of these are there and >>> were just not mentioned, or these could be things Apple will never include >>> because of the experience they want to provide. I will list what I think is >>> missing and state why I think they are good features to include. Of course, >>> this is just my opinion, these may not matter to some people and that's >>> fine. >>> No built in file management. Just about every other operating system, >>> whether mobile or desktop provides a way to browse the files and folders on >>> your device and change them. IOS 7 still has no built in file manager, and >>> no support for USB mass storage or media transfer protocol. I think there >>> is an app you can get that helps with some of this, and the air drop may >>> make this a bit easier, but still transferring content from a computer to >>> an IOS device is more difficult than it needs to be. With Android for >>> example, many devices support mass storage, and those that do not have a >>> memory card slot support media transfer protocol, or you can install an app >>> that lets the device show up on your network like any other drive. >>> No option to change default apps. As far as I know, there is no way to >>> change what app will be the default when doing things like clicking links >>> or opening files in other applications. For example, you can install other >>> browsers, but you cannot set them as the default. On operating systems such >>> as android and the mac, this can easily be changed. >>> Apple does not allow you to change the default keyboard used for typing. >>> While you can install other keyboards such as fleksy, you must go in to the >>> application and type what you want, then choose to send a text message, >>> send email, or copy the text to paste in another program. In Android for >>> example, you can install and set other keyboards as the default. I'm >>> currently beta testing fleksy for android, and if I set it as the default, >>> I can use it to type in any application. You can also dictate within fleksy >>> for android if you wish since any keyboard has access to android's voice >>> recognition service. >>> I was also hoping Apple would have opened up the way text to speech is >>> handled, but this does not appear to be the case. It's good that they added >>> a male voice, probably Tom. However, the same restrictions still apply as >>> far as I know. First, developers are not permitted to use the voices that >>> IOS already has. This means that if an application wants to provide text to >>> speech, aside from voiceover, the application must license and include its >>> own TTS engine. So, for example, let's say you have the read to go app, the >>> motion x GPS app and the blindsquare app installed. You would most likely >>> have 3 copies of the same Acapela TTS on your device, taking at least an >>> extra 100 MB on your device. If Apple allowed developers to use the built >>> in voices, this would not be necessary. Similarly, Apple does not allow you >>> to install new system wide voices. Speech is very subjective, but if you >>> wanted to use Acapela for example with voiceover, this is not possible >>> because of Apple's restrictions. With operating systems like the mac and >>> Android, any application is free to use the voices provided, and you can >>> install third party TTS engines such as Acapela and Ivona, and they are >>> available for screen readers, or any other application that wants to use >>> them. To be required to have more than one copy of a voice on a device is a >>> waste of space, especially when it offers no benefit to the user. >>> IOS is certainly very accessible, but I am a bit disappointed that Apple >>> has not opened things up a bit for developers and provided access to file >>> management. I'm not saying Android is perfect, it isn't, but it does >>> include some major things that I think the newest version of IOS is still >>> lacking. > > >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >>> "MacVisionaries" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >>> email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "MacVisionaries" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. 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