2019-02-03 10:09:33

Hi.
@Jack: Thanks for your reply in post 89. I didn't knew about this add on for NVDA. Sounds awesome. I will check that out for sure.
Regarding the laptop you have posted information about: Seems nice. But without the danish keyboard, it'll not work good. There are work arounds, but not something I can live with. Sadly, the difference regarding warranty is so big from the US to Denmark, that most companies can't live up to that. However, I'm glad to see a company in the US making this accessible service. Amazing!
@Dark: Depending on the settings on the Mac you tried, you might have to press FN command f5 to turn Voiceover off again. Something which VOiceover should have told those who are new the first time they start it up. smile
@Ethin: Now you are saying the right thing. You move from "advantages for all people" to "your advantages." There is a very huge difference in my opinion.
When you talk about "advantages" like you did before, it could be understood as "advantages for all people." By saying "advantages for me" it is actually only your own advantages. I'm sorry if I misunderstood your previous post.
If you really ment "advantages for all people," then you haven't answered my questions yet.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2019-02-03 14:12:41

@dark

Security, for me, is not everything, but it is very important. There's always going to be a traid-off between convenience and security, but using windows XP is like keeping your front door unlocked (depending on where you live). Nothing may happen, but when something does happen, you're very screwed indeed. Myself, I just use windows 10 with it's builtin antivirus. Third-party antivirus sollutions can also be used, but are not always more secure and can sometimes be vulnerable themselves. A high profile case was AVG having a browser extention allowing man in the middle attacks, if I remember correctly. In a man in the middle attack, someone basically inserts themselves between your computer and the destination website eg your bank, but your bank and you think you're talking directly to each other. The attacker can modify both your information sent to the bank and the information coming back, as well as read everything in between. Also third-party antivirus providers tend to insert themselves into parts of your operating system they have no business being, for example your email client. They tend to add something like "This e-mail is virus-free as confirmed by avast antivirus" to your every email.

As regarding macs being status items, I disagree. A computer like the del xps 13 is not necesarily cheaper.

Roel
golfing in the kitchen

2019-02-03 15:55:30

Xps/Latitude are generally business machines - I should know since I had a latitude for 4 years lol. Not too bad of a machine either, quad core at 2.7ghz I believe with 8gb ram and a 500gb hard drive not sure if it was an ssd though. Plenty of laptops with killer specs exist for around the same price as a mid to high-end mac would, but they either actually last, or some still may have a replaceable battery.
@SLJ; So what I'm understanding is that a Danish keyboard is different hardware altogether different than the US Layout, so if you were to take care of (possibly expensive) international shipment, you would then have to buy a separate keyboard (even if it were a mechanical, that would still defeat the purpose of it being portable.) I see the disadvantage right there.
You also asked about VLC earlier. On Windows, I stopped using vlc, and I now use Foobar2000, do to its true system-wide customizable keyboard commands (I have ctrl+win+x to play, ctrl+win+c to pause, etc. A winamp-style keymap. Plus, foobar has the ability to stream youtube videos directly through a built-in youtube search, so that's worth taking advantage of over vlc.

2019-02-03 22:12:51 (edited by Slender 2019-02-03 23:22:49)

Built in? Pretty sure YouTube searching and playback is part of a component, specifically this one.

Oh no! Somebody released the h key! Everybody run and hide!

2019-02-03 22:24:00

Getting this topic back on track, one thing people have hinted at but not explicitly said, is Lets say the developer has done everything to get there game on MacOS. The problem is the tools aren't there for even the most devoted devs.
BGT: only supports Windows
Python: supports basically all platforms, but to get speech you have to use AccessibleOutput2
C++, C#, insert your favorite language here: TOLK probably supports it but TOLK only uses Windows screen readers.
Now you're basically at writing your own reader for your game. Which defeats the point of all of these so called speech abstraction libraries. they advertise write one thing and get speech no matter what. Well its more like get speech only on Windows.

admittedly Windows probably does have a greater market share than MacOS, but if the libraries aren't even there and the devs distain MacOS and write it off, It's not going to get any better.

I don’t believe in fighting unnecessarily.  But if something is worth fighting for, then its always a fight worth winning.
check me out on Twitter and on GitHub

2019-02-03 22:52:12 (edited by Ethin 2019-02-03 22:54:11)

@105, na, this can be gotten around. Speech-dispatcher has a Python module, so you can use that. In Mac you have AppKit to use, and on Windows you have Tolk. I don't understand the hype of accessible_output2 since its a bloated software library that depends on far too much for a speech library (I have a game engine that localized TTS output for all platforms -- Windows, Mac and Linux -- into one file with the only dependencies being Tolk on Windows, AppKit with PyObjC on Mac, and Speech Dispatcher on Linux, so don't understand what makes Accessible Output2 so unique). The problem of C++/C# does still exist though; you can use speech dispatcher in C++ and Tolk in C++ too but AppKit? Yeah.... good luck with that one. I mean, they have a C interface, but the entire thing was mainly written in Objective-C, and I don't know how up to date their C interface is.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2019-02-03 22:52:13

I meant to say plugin, lol.

2019-02-03 22:53:03

And this is true. And don't even get mt started on working with Apple's speech api upclose. Too much trouble for what it's worth.

2019-02-03 23:22:40

Ethin where is this file. I am very much interested in it.

I don’t believe in fighting unnecessarily.  But if something is worth fighting for, then its always a fight worth winning.
check me out on Twitter and on GitHub

2019-02-04 00:53:10

@109, which one? The engine where the code is is closed source, but the C interface to NSSpeechSynthesizer is at https://developer.apple.com/documentati … ynthesizer

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2019-02-04 04:03:20

and the original poster has not even replied to their own posts, which is typical. I have felt amazing improvements in windows 10. The only thing I truly dislike about apple is their policies. Mac might be different to use and probably more reliable in many cases, somewhat more secure and whatever, but I always felt it was kind of closed... you don't like some  things about voiceover? no choice, sorry. You cannot communicate with ntfs formatted  drives, so sorry, reformat and start all over. You want to increase your laptops ram? wait while we babysit you with the next 800 dollars plus ultra shiny upgrade. Oops! you spilled something on your new amazing mac based laptop? sorry, you will have to just buy another one because you might be too dumb to replace a hard drive, taking it to the store won't work this time (you'll see exactly why if you open and read the article).

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

2019-02-04 07:47:10 (edited by Kyleman123 2019-02-04 07:48:26)

Ethin wrote:

I have a game engine that localized TTS output for all platforms -- Windows, Mac and Linux -- into one file with the only dependencies being Tolk on Windows, AppKit with PyObjC on Mac, and Speech Dispatcher on Linux,

that file
but i will check out the link you provided.

I don’t believe in fighting unnecessarily.  But if something is worth fighting for, then its always a fight worth winning.
check me out on Twitter and on GitHub

2019-02-04 08:36:42

@Jack: Yes, that's what I exactly mean regarding the danish keyboard hardware.
Regarding Fuubar: Sounds like an interesting player. I haven't looked at it, but sounds like I should check it out.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2019-02-04 14:51:12

That aside, vlc isn’t that bad either. I use it myself on a daily basis, left and right to forward forward / backward respectively, up and down for volume. Never had any complaints.

2019-02-05 00:17:04

VLC isn't half bad (I used it on one of my machines) but the lack of true system-wide hotkey support was a slight nuisance.
As for NTFS: You can get Paragon NTFS for mac, but that's a paid product (although often times you'll see external drives, particularly those from Seagate, come with copies of the NTFS driver.)
Everything else you said is quite true though. I was fortunate enough to get a hard drive upgrade with a Transcend Jetdrive, but the mbp2017 and up is starting to make that not possible.

2019-02-05 08:18:14

Do not use Paragon NTFS. I tried to use the program for a half year, which result in messing up all the data on my harddrive. That's my experience though, not saying this is what happens to everyone.
My solution is to format the harddrive to XFat, which works much more stable for me on all operating systems.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2019-02-05 14:58:00

Well that's a real bummer. I couldn't imagine it not working, since the extFS driver works just fine. Then again, Mac OS Extended and Linux Extended filesystem are probably a bit more closely related than ntfs.

2019-02-05 16:10:57

I used paragon software on windows, never worked. The only bad thing about ex-fat is taht files upwards from 4 gb are just not a possibility. That is challenging when you have larger video files and then interchanging things becomes just very annoying. Since I work with bands and videos and music all the time, that is almost a daily problem for me. Its very sad.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

2019-02-05 22:39:52

What you need to realise with third-party ntfs drivers is that they are reverse-engineerd from the real thing. And that's bound to be less stable than a filesystem driver for a filesystem with actual known specifications. That said, I've used ntfs3g in the past on mac, *as long as* you eject the drive properly via finder you should be fine, just unplugging it will break your filesystem. A chkdsk over it will recover most of it, except the new files you copied. Note: ntfs3g is hard to install and you need at least to disable system integrity protection, using something like xfat would be safer in general.

Roel
golfing in the kitchen

2019-10-02 21:22:10

I used Windows until 2017 when I got my first MacBook. I couldn't figure out how to produce my own music, but in less than a year I could on a Mac.. Jaws took me years to figure out how to use comfortably, but VO took a few months. I've not had to take my Mac in for repairs, but it seemed like once every year and a half or so I was taking my laptop or desktop in for some problem or another.. Imo Mac seems to be more secure, stable, fluid, and less stressful. I don't like the new direction they're headed in as far as the Mac seems to be going, and I don't agree with charging developers $100 a year.. I'm willing to pay for my gaming experience depending on the game though. Musicians work hard their entire lives to become great at what they do, and I'm sure its the same for developing games on some level.. We all have bills to pay at the end of the day. I'll eventually end up getting an iPhone and ditching my MacBook if things keep progressing downhill.

2019-10-04 01:24:30 (edited by UltraLeetJ 2019-10-04 01:27:06)

roelvdwal wrote:

A chkdsk over it will recover most of it, except the new files you copied. Note: ntfs3g is hard to install and you need at least to disable system integrity protection, using something like xfat would be safer in general.

my god... lol
yeah, x fat is the way to go and more devices are realizing this and so they are recording files that are not bigger than 4 gb, (the file simply splits after this point) to ensure full compatibility everywhere.
Still, its very sad. People complaining lots about the new ultra awesome butterfly keyboard on the latest mac machines was also very sad, and yeah, the general direction they are heading. By the way, this machine has had this record:
windows 10 has been running for
49 days, 00:30:18

and I have not had to even restart one single time. This is because I am on an ssd. Reaper surpasses what people can do with protools (I know this because I write articles on the accessibility wiki) and windows is winning simply because there is an NVDA add on which made using things like melodyne possible, ah, and yes, OCR.
I have had about 10 or 12 virtual instruments running here, and not a single crash, so mac's preference for producers and audio elites and whatever other edges are just out the window.
Apple's days are certainly being slowly dwindling.
so, conclusion and end of story: besides an accessible startup menu and an sort of an accessible bios thing plus an unified experience (assuming you spend lots of money on many things which most of us do not) if that can be called that way, there is no difference or advantage of usability in macs. Thanks to those who tried though.

And, yes, audio games would be nicer in more platforms but some companies (ahum) are not making this a nice or even a welcoming process at all.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

2019-10-04 02:13:55

hmmm. I wonder what was your windowws computer. Don't blame the OS for hardware issues. Blame the manufacturer. Anyway, I barely know any bline person that uses a Mac book. Or anyone, to be exact. WWindows is on top. That 100 dollars a month, or year or whatever it is can be used for more important things. Like for instance, better sound design.
*rant*
Now, why is it that a good amount of people have this entality that Apple is better than Jesus? I mean, come on. Android is passing IOS. No matter how hard you try to deny it. Windows again, is picking up pase. In future, I think Apple, if there is an Apple might be good for Apple TV+. The only affordable thing they offer. You know how much the new iPhone 11 Pro Max costs in TTD's? 7700 dollars. That's about 77% the average salary of the average Trinidadian. Ridiculous! Their price, to me, is not practical. An A70 Samsung, that costs 2000 Dollars, has almost the same performance as an iPhone. We tested it today.
*End Rant*
Merry Christmas, my Apple fanboys.

You ain't done nothin' if you ain't been cancelled
_____
I'm working on a playthrough series of the space 4X game Aurora4x. Find it here

2019-10-04 02:30:23

Some external hd's offer a better ntfs driver from Paragon, particularly those from Seagate. You should obviously still get into the practice of safe-ejecting the drive, but it's a more stable solution. Although the only time you will ever need it is when doing a Windows to Go or Bootcamp setup.

2019-10-05 19:09:25

Hi:

Does anyone think that Project Catalyst will make a difference to audiogaming? Would blind developers be willing to work with it to bring iOS apps to the Mac? Or is this just a case of games for everyone else? Would like to see an accessible Mac version of KODP, for example. (Yes, I know, the developer of KODP isn't blind, but he's a good example of a developer who went out of his way to make his games accessible to VoiceOver users, when so many developers haven't been made aware that VoiceOver exists, let alone made their games work with it.)

When the wandering fire strikes the heart of stone, will you follow? Will you take ... the longest road?
Guy Gavriel Kay

discord: tayo134

2019-10-05 19:19:00

It'll make a difference for whoever takes advantage of it. The way they do things is so off it's not even funny. Any app coded in Swift UI and developed to be cross-platform will work just fine. Many games probably use custom engines or Unity, even some newer games for the blind, so those won't work on the mac through Project Catalyst directly. IF they had just done in like Google did and just released the runtime, any app would work on it. But alas, that would mean people potentially would not want to spend money on an iPhone if Apple just released an IOS virtual runtime for mac, right?