Them adding this to the IPhone will not convince me to by one. This feature may prove useful for browsing the web, but how about entering data? For me, I gotta have a keyboard or keypad to enter data. other then that I might get used to this idea. If I have some money to throw away in a year or two, and if apple adds this to the ITouch, then I might give it a go for fun. As for the Macbook, I might convince someone to update to snow lepord and letting me have a go.

As for me I look at the feature I want over the OS. I got a n6620 because I want a phone that reads out the caller ID among other things and the N6620 with talks does this. I choose my computer and media player the same way. It happons that I have a windows machine here because I have some OCR software that I use. I don't know rather or not Apple or is more microsoft then microsoft. I just haven't tried using a mac lately, but my IPod works fine for me. From my point of view, Apple and microsoft are always at each other's throte and seeing them fight out can be quite fun. let's face it, windows have more of the apps that I use. To bad apple aint listening to this form, because it isn't the cool factor I want, it's more like a PC built to my needs. On the other hand I hear that if you have to reinstoll the OS on the mac, you really don't have to input a long key like you do when installing windows. Also you can install the OS on as many mac as you want to. OK, I hate DRM no matter who uses it. in this case I don't know who's worse at using DRM. OK I'll like to see that article. Apple fanboys are going after windows fanboys and windows fanboys are going after mac users. I guess what I'm saying is that the macs aint for everyone and I'm willing to choose what ever I need most. Then again, I would like to see how apple does wit OS 10.6. I hear that they are charging around $30 to upgrade from 10.5. Who knows what MS is going to charge, but on the other hand, macs are going to have a more out of pocket cost then a PC.

Snow Leopard looks exciting. I will definitely be upgrading. I don't know if I will be getting a macbook, but I'd like to try it.  The iPhone is intreaguing.  Sighted users complain constantly about the touchscreen keypad, and i won't pretend I'm not concerned about it, but I have little success typing on my current phone's teeny-weeny qwerty keyboard.  I can't get an iPhone at msrp for a year because of my contract, and my pantec with mobilespeak works quite nicely, with no crashes or anything - just a little slow and herky-jerky sometimes.  Voiceover for the mac is very responsive, so I've no doubt iPhone's version will be similar. I might start a new topic to discuss this.

Installing Mac OS is against the license agreement, and I believe Apple have set the installer to refuse to install on non-Apple computers thus requiring a lot of awkward hacking work.

I believe there are OCR packages available for the Mac, though I obviously can't comment on their quality since I haven't got one.

I'm also not surprised that iPhones and iPods are a bigger seller for Apple. iPod has become  almost a generic name for an MP3 player with less technical people, and they are essentially a fashion brand of technology in a lot of ways.

Apple is out to sell whatever they can, as is Microsoft. Of course Microsoft doesn't make significant amounts of hardware themself, so they sell in different ways. Apple seem to have had a lot more backward compatibility for older macs with their new OS versions than Microsoft, so it seems hardware isn't their only concern.

I guess lower upgrade prices result in higher uptake of the new version, combined with their more consistent backward compatibility. There are fewer downsides to moving from say leopard to snow leopard than there would be from upgrading XP to vista.

When did anyone actually say in this topic that the mac was more expensive? They cost more for an entry poihnt because Apple don't sell low end macs, a true low end mac does not exist.

What I actually said was that Apple are just as commercialised as Microsoft, and that people just don't seem to notice it. They are every bit as anti competitive, if not more so. I was referring to business practices when I said Apple are more Microsoft than Microsoft ever were.

The worst people for not noticing this are Apple fans who seem to see everything the company does through rose tinted glasses.

If I ever move fully to macs I'll do so because it's the better platform for me, if I decide it is, not because I actually like Apple. Pure practicality, no sentimentality at all.

Microsoft develop software like companies develop games or make movies, there has to be a big wow factor to go with the new one even if you've experienced the previous one(s). This is incredibly tiresome, and leads to lots of compatibility issues.

Apple aren't so bad in that regard luckily. It doesn't mean they are any more a positive force however, just that they tend to make higher quality products and they actually know what public relations means. Public relations as in manipulating public opinion, not anything warm and fluffy.

Apologies, I must have missed that one.

I would honestly love tot ry a dual booted mac, though currently money is tighter thane xpected thanks to my having unexpectedly moved out of home. That's what you get when your mother suddenly comes home one day and says she's found a suitable house for you laugh. I had hoped to try an iMac, but I might be forced to try a mac mini instead. Dual boot is definitely the way to go, though I did hear Microsoft tried nobbling Vista so taht only the Ultimate version may be run inside a VM along with a change to their license.

I don't know entirely which adverts you mean, maybe I've not caught them or maybe we didn't get them this side of the water feature. I don't think either Apple or Microsoft know how to advertise computers very well though. I find the iPhone ads extremely irritating however since they make it seem like it is a one of a kind, and nothing else is capable of doing all that it can. Windows mobile based phones have been doing that kind of stuff for a long time now. Guess it's part of those business practices, and Apple's smaller products being style focused.

if I were to have a mac it would be the macbook. the mini just doesn't sound like the way to go for me, it's like a laptop/macbook with parts scattered around. keyboard separately, etc.

I can see where the the mac mini is a scattered macbook" thing comes into play. It is basically all the parts of the macbook. It uses laptop RAM, laptop hard drive, laptop logic/motherboard and so on. Hell, you could probably build a macbook out of a mini's parts if you had a macbook case I am almost sure

CX2, dont worry about missing that part. I miss things all the time Like I said, I was just saying that the cost thing isn't a good arguemant for not buying a mac when it comes to being visually impaired (when you have to buy everything on your own). As far as the "open book" "I can just throw a page on and scan" arguement almost every professional OCR program happens to do that now too, so that is a bad arguement too. Where do you think Openbook got that from? Unless you take OB, and use all of it's advanced features, like HTML markup, daisy creating/editing/markup and all you do is toss and scan, then I think the Mac's versions of Abby and Omnipage are probably just fine. Now... "Syncing my PM up, and audio games. THAT is one hell of an arguemant. (I am not picking, just saying that games/syncing is a real arguement and cost/scanning is not) Games are one of the reasons that I won't completely switch over to OSX. There are like two others, but games play a big part. I will, probably forever (unless the Mac Crossover can start to do the Windows based audio games soon, it does visual games and other programs) dual boot/run VmWare.

As far as running VmWare while in OSX, it can do more than Vista Ultimate. Last I checked, it does all of Vista's versions, all of XP's versions (I use it with XP Home), and they were working on it working with Windows 7. *shrug* if you have the cash, and want a super machine, why not get a Mac, run Snow Leopard, whatever version of Windows you like, and a form of Linux? Seeing as you can run more than one instance of VmWare to run more than one virtual OS.

As for the new iPhone... Have I missed something totally, or do you still have to click apps to be able to bring up things to use the voice command on? I mean can you say "open iTunes" and have it open, then while it's open, say "make phone call" or no? I know that you have to either have a headpiece that you can click a certain button on to make the phone pick up on your talking to it, or click somethign on the actual phone. You can't just start talking to it to have it follow your commands.

The commercials I am talking about are the ones that are for the Mac computers versus Windows machines. They tend to have two guys that are the main part. One is "the mac" and the other is "the PC." They start up with some goofy piano music, the PC says something, the Mac says "I'm better because..." and then the PC gets all dejected and stuff. They end with the same music they started with, and that is it. Here is a link for a pages worth of commercials.

http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/

They are funny (most of the time) but definitely didnt shift my decision on which to purchase. So after watching them (or one), tell me. Does anyone with half a brain really buy a mac because of these commercials? Really?

And finally, since this post seems to just be going and going...

For the iPod and "not being really accessible" why does it seem that no one remembers that there is a software (firmware replacement) package called Rockbox? Not only that but you arent limited to only iPods. Total speech (for almost everything, but everything important). Hell, why not take a game and try to port it to that device? If they can port regular games to Rockbox, why not audio games? Wouldn't that be like the perfect and ultimate "visually impaired/blind" gaming device? I mean sure, you can't get online with it, but single player is better than nothing.

*phew* I didn't mean for this to go this long, but now that I am finished, I'm a makes a sammich!

LOL. I didn't know that most pro software had the toss and scan feature that OB has. Although, I have found that OB works OK for the bookshare books. Also all freedomscientific has to do is combine FSReader and Openbook and they would have a really good reading package. I totally for got about rockbox. Guess I really didn't want to worry about reflashing the player. I've heard or should I ssay read, someware on the web that the new IPhone comes with Voiceover installed. Maybe in this topic? anyway, bet you will need ITunes to enable it. I'll go hunt down the needed links. As for syncing the PM up with with the mac, I've heard that  you might beable to use a program call MissingSync or some such name. Don't know how useful it is or how it helps with installing software on the PM. As for the best machine, then take the mac and install every OS that you can think into VMWare, asuming you have the harddrive space, and you can basicly use any piece of software on the market that is accessible to you. Sorry about coming up with a topic that lasted so long. I guess I wanted to see if good or bad points would show up and how many of each among other things wich has been stated earlyer.
Edit
just go here for the feature list of the IPhone 3GS. then click or press enter on the link that says "Learn more about accessibility". still wondering if they are carying that feature over to the touch. I'm asuming they are, but you never know.