Topic by Nocturnus 2016-03-14 18:03:00

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Thanks to @Sebby, @arqmeister, @wanderer, and @aaron77, who all posted helpful tips for my curious and naive mind, getting started on the mini was almost flawless.  I say almost because it wasn't flawless.  What it has been, is an experience I've been waiting on for quite some time.
Sebby was almost entirely responsible for my having dropped nearly $2000 on a mac, and I say almost entirely, because the rest of the entirety was kind of divided between myself and MS.  I proudly claim the responsibility for previous mentioned action, as I am now the proud user of a mini that sits proudly on my proud desk sounding loud and proud on my sound system.  Voiceover, great!  Facetime, good.  Messages, lovely.  Safari, hmmm, kinda feels clunky, but it'll work.  ITunes, still wrapping my head around it.  Nightowl, fun!  Text edit, reasonable.  Contacts, just, wow!  Ok ok, so I wasn't able to set someone's birthday on it, but I think that's just a bug with the app more than myself, or maybe it is myself.
But where it really gets cool is, familiarity!  Voiceover doesn't feel different on my mac, on my iPhone, on my watch or on my TV.  Info I care about is always with me... Even my mac alerts me to phonecalls now.  if I turn this thing off, which I've only done once, it's ready to go within about 10 seconds.  If I want interactive screen reader support, it's only a couple of keystrokes away.  If I need a sandwitch... Just making sure you're still paying attention.
And yet, my mac usage has raised a few questions, which I've no doubt do have answers even if I don't necessarily like them.  I realize that some of these may sound as if I'm hoping to accomplish things on my mac as I would on a windows PC, but the fact is that I'm willing to settle for alternatives wherever necessary.
1.  What is the best way to monitor an audio input?
2.  Closely related to 1, is there a stereoMix equivalent?
3.  How, for the life of me, can I get rid of that useless and rather distracting habit voiceover has of pitching down a voice when it encounters bits of information it believes are important to me?  I hate entering an edit field and hearing the label in a voice that sounds completely and entirely different from the one I know I'm supposed to be listening to.  Is this a bug, or else a joke?  I've plundered the voiceover utility for the past couple of days trying to figure this issue out, but have come up with nothing.
4.  is it just me, or does Apple have a way of introducing things that are absolutely amusing even if they are useless?  I mean, what the blazes is up with that duplicate feature?  I only discovered it accidentally, but still can't think of a use for it, since one already has copy and paste at their fingertips as well.
5.  What's up with Donalt Trump?
Overall, while this is not my final take on such a system, I'm pleased.  I was right when I stated that it wasn't going to make me as happy as XP once did, but OSX has certainly liberated me in ways I myself could never have imagined from a windows world that no longer deserves my technological attention and effort.  A little less than a month in, with only the past two weeks truly serving as the meat and potatos of my entire experience with El Capitan, but just as many have pointed out, I'm getting faster, becoming more confident, and surely learning what I need to know to thrive as I did with windows.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

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Reply by leibylucw 2016-03-14 23:42:27

  • Registered: 2011-11-27
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Hmmm...Reading this post is helping me along making the decision to switch.

To answer a few of your questions, though, I will say whatever you're looking for regarding monitoring audio and then recording (if that's what you intend to do with the "stereo mix equivalent"), said audio will require to shell out a few extra bucks to get Audio Hijack.  It's just an application like NCH's Soundtap Streaming Audio Recorder, but for Mac.  Now, I'm hoping somebody will jump in and talk about the accessibility of this program.  I myself haven't talked to anybody about VO's interaction with it, but for $50 you'd better make sure you can use it before buying it.

There are a plethora of apps you can get for free to monitor audio input from line-in microphones.  Again, though, accessibility is part of the equation.

Finally, have you encountered the entirety of VoiceOver's utility and options?  If I'm correct, you're talking about pitch change, the equivalent of VO on iOS, then there is a way to do it, but it's been months since using a Mac for me to direct you right to the option.

Oh, and Trump is despicable.

Best Regards,

Luke

What game will hadi.gsf want to play next?

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Reply by Sebby 2016-03-15 17:36:32

  • Sebby
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For the audio mix, something like Audio Hijack or Loopback, yes. I haven't had a need for either of these, as it happens, but of course others will have. Give them a shot.

Pitch change can't be turned off in OS X VoiceOver as far as I know, unlike on iOS, where it can. No, I have no idea why either. You can turn off some options (like capitals) that use it, but you can't stop it from using pitch change to indicate certain hints. To be fair, but only slightly, the pitch change is trying to inform you about default text, but still it really should be an option. Write to [email protected] and express your gripe if you've a mind.

Duplicate? Yeah, you're right, it's almost useless. But it can be very nice, if you're in a classic Macintosh mindset: if you have drives showing on your desktop, and someone gives you a thumb drive and says "Copy that", then you can just press Command-D when it's selected and you'll get a folder on your desktop by the same name as the drive (the same volume label) with all of its contents. So it's all right. smile

XP? Yes, you'll need a VM with that in it. Can be arranged with a copy of Fusion. I agree, XP had all the ducks lined up nicely, but it's no way to run your computer nowadays, of course, and contemporary Windows is just yucky.

I'll let you get back with the rest. Glad you're coming along with it, and keep learning. smile

Just myself, as usual.

Sebby's Website

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Reply by aaron77 2016-03-21 01:32:00 (edited by aaron77 2016-03-21 01:33:09)

  • From: united states
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1-2.  Audio highjack is fully accessible.  It's one of the coolest pieces of software I've ever played with in my life, and the developer is very committed to accessibility.  You can see what I mean by going to http://www.applevis.com/guides/mac-apps … -voiceover

Even if you don't use a mac, some of you will probably still find this app very neat.  Instead of pressing a little stereo mix button to record all of your system's audio, you essentially have a grid, and blocks you can place on the grid to achieve certain tasks.  For example, connecting a block that records what ITunes is playing to a block that records it to an mp3 file.  But that mp3 file block could be connected to several other blocks, such as skype, or maybe vmware fusion.  So then you'd have an  mp3 file consisting of ITunes, vmware fusion, and  any other things that were connected to the mp3 file block.  You can schedule recordings, have multiple recordings being made by the same session by simply adding more mp3 blocks.  I say mp3,  but it supports several formats.  Anyway, you have to read about it to understand it, because my explanations are awful.
Another application by the same company is Nicecast.  It allows you to stream any application's audio, or all of the system's audio, to an icecast server.  It's also fully accessible, although there are a couple of unlabeled buttons here and there.
3. no idea, I honestly never really noticed it.
4. because apple engineers were really, really bored one day and thought they'd write random code to see what it would do.
5. America's savior! well... not really.  I prefer to put it as America's Trump Card.

I'm probably gonna get banned for this, but...

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