Category: Geeks r Us
Hi all. I am thinking about mooving to the Mac and of course I have questions. Lol
I have been reading a lot about Mac's accessibility to find out if it's my thing and I think it is.
My idea was to replace both my desktop and laptop for a Mac Minny. Like that I would have a nice desktop which I could also carry with me when I need it knowing that I need to connect it to the electricity because there is no batteries.
So because this thing doesn't have a keyboard, I thought it would be nice if I am able to control it fully from the braille display.
So here is the question: Can I control fully a Mac from the Braille Display?
The other thing because I am a musician, I need a music notation software which is accessible. I am a Goodfeel and LimeAloud user on Windows but I guess there is nothing similar for the Mac. I will probably have to use Windows with a bootcamp for running some of my Windows Programs.
If you know of any Accessible music notation software for the Mac please let me know.
The other question is: for my audio books I use Dspeech on Windows for converting my rtf, doc, txt books etc in to Mp3 files for listening!
Is there something similar on a Mac?
And which text editing software would you recommend me?
I need basic text editing tasks with a good braillle support. I would like a lite program. I hate Microsoft Word for that! And also it would be nice to find a program with portuguese and french dictionaries which are the languages I also use on my work!
And now the last question which is probably stupid but I am new to this. When I buy an app for my Mac, can I use it onn my Ios device or not at all. For example, I purchase pages for the Mac: if I want to use it on the IPHONE, I have to buy it again right?
This are my first questions.
I would mention more if they come to my mind!
Thank you very much for reading and possibly for the help!
Cheers
Hi i've been useing the mac for a year. and i really enjoy it vary much. pages is a great app. comgrads about you getting a mac.
Oh goody! Somebody already started this thread so I can just add to it.
It's time to replace my poor dying netbook and we're thinking about combining our desire for a mac mini because of garage band, I-movie, etc, with my need for a new netbook, and getting a Macbook or something similar. I have a couple of questions.
1. How easy is it to do stuff like amazon.com, facebook, zonebbs, playroom, and RS games? Those are the main things I use the web for on my netbook.
2. Can I navigate the BARD website with a mac, download and unzip the files and then transfer them to my dtbm cartrage or a flash drive? This is another biggy.
3. I understand that there's support for opening .pdf and .doc email attachments. With what ap would I do so? Also, with this app, I'm assuming that I could transfer my .doc, and .txt files to the Mac for quick reference. I have all my recipies stored on it for quick access when cooking so would rather not have to run upstairs to the desktop every time I want to check an ingredient. lol
4. Is there a program like duxbury to translate and emboss braille files? That may not be as big of an issue because I can get it installed and working on my desktop which is a W7 machine. That would be my preference anyway. I would however need the ability to copy files to a sd card etc for transfering.
5. With a Mac laptop, whether it's a Macbook or Airmac, if I want to operate it from the comfort of my comfy chair, will I need a bunch of accessories like the magic mouse, touchpad, etc? I am pretty sure that I've seen the touchpad is built in so does that work well enough?
Thanks in advance for any helpful advice. I'm about to go try to research all this stuff for myself but as usual, this is a great place to get answers to all my geeky questions in one spot.
So, after doing some research, it would appear that I will be able to do the BARD stuff and move those files. It would also appear that I'll be able to access and edit my .doc files using Pages. It would appear that while there's a significant learning curve, I'll be able to do my amazon.com shopping. lol I've seen people talking on hear about RS games and I'm pretty sure I saw a mac download link on Playroom. Now I guess my only question is how would I use a braille embosser with a Mac?
That's not a deal breaker though but it would be nice.
I'm actually really getting excited because I've picked out the one we want and it will be less expensive than I thought. It'll probably be a couple of months before I get it but, boy, am I excited!
As a new mac user I can tell you you do not need a crap load of accessories for a mac laptop. yes the touch pad on the apple mac book air and pro's work beautifully with their laptops. As for play room working on a mac not sure, that is something I will check out soon.
i checked out the playroom for the mac and i haven't found it. i emailed them though. so if you guys do, let em know. lol
We plan to get the daugheeter an iMac for her place and she'll run around with an iPad, then it'll be a Mac Mini for the wife and either an iMac or Mac Mini plus an extra screen for me. The reason for the screen would be because VoiceOver is said to work poorly without it.
Am I mistaken here? Are the Macbook laptops really competitively priced? The wife will get the Mac Mini because she has a 19 inch screen though perhaps we will move her to a 21-inch.
Anyway I have quite awhile until the two of them, let alone myself.
the newer mac minis work without a screen with voiceover, they corrected that over 2 years ago. I'd usually suggest the macBook pro to people if they want power that way you have the portablity and also battery life, 7 hours of it, in case you don't have an outlet close by. If you really need windows a vm might work better than bootcamp, that way you can troubleshoot things a lot easier and keep an image handy in case things go horribly wrong. If anyone has questions about the mac or apps you can add me on skype, my ID is rattail4. Oh one last note, IOS and mac apps are completely different, kind of like windows mobile and full windows xp or 7 programs, they're designed to run on their target platform only unless otherwise noted.
Oh that's great to hear about the Mini. So for the two of us it will be a pair of Minis.
For financial reasons we'll probably be getting the daughter a iMac since she'll have an iPad for when she's on the run, one with the Keyboard Buddy or similar case with a keyboard in it.
Thanks for the info on the new Minis. I heard from someone recently that they made VoiceOver go sluggish without a screen but glad to know that information is out of date. And yes, I would definitely opt for a Virtual Machine and so much RAM it's ridiculous if I need Windows on that machine.
the mini defaults with 4 gigs of ram currently but you can bump it to 8 if you need to do so. Keep in mind, the IMac is a desktop, not a laptop.
Yes, but we'd seen where a lot of parents are outfitting kids with tablets like iPad with keyboard case, and some sort of desktop for the apartment. Then with iCloud and her Gmail as a couple cloud sources she should be good. Plus her being into photography she will want more screen, like what an iMac offers.
To answer the questions in the most coherent semblance of sentences. Any errors in transmition, fact, or me having any clue what I'm talking about are the fault of my keyboard, not me.
You can control a mac almost completely with a braille display. I don't commonly use one, but there is a way to assign braille commands to voiceOver functions.
For music notation, you have garage band for composition, but this works by external keyboard quite different from lime's tedious note-entry method.
I use a program called vox-machina to make mp3 files from text. It isn't very good, interfaces poorly with the mac premium voices, but is accessible. The two others that aren't accessible at the time of incoherently typing are type it read it (this crashes voiceOver) and naturalreader (this just doesn't work).
For text editing, I use text edit. It's free, comes with your mac, and can handle most of your needs.
You cannot use mac apps on IOS or visa versa. These two apps are completely different. They do not function at all on the other platform, although some integrate to other versions through iCloud.
You can use the zoneBBS and RSGames for the mac very well. You cannot use the playroom (trust me, people ask this all the time). Anyway, just stick to RSGames. It's better anyway.
You do not need a separate application to use attached doc and pdf files on macOS. This is because MacOS has a file system analogous to windows.
You do not need any accessories for an apple laptop; everything is built in.
If you have any other questions, chances are I will no longer have these brain cells and cannot answeryou. Until then, feel free to direct them my way.
I have a question, how do you know that boot camp is downloading the windows system files for mac's hardware when there is no percentage bar, no sound like its downloading? I have sat here for a bit and its getting frustrating at this time.
Okay after fighting this all day, trying to like hell download the windows drivers from apple here goes what needs to be done. First off, a USB flash drive or USB harddrive needs to be formatted to FNTS file system. Second off, when in boot camp, find the scrol bar, interact with it "vo+shift down-arrow" and move to the left. When your arrowing arround you should hear your attached storage devices, pick the one you formatted to the windows file system. Now, stop interacting with it and find the next button so you can move to the next screen. Now your set, just sit back, pray the download does not hang and let it complete its windows driver download.
I just used a CD. I knew it was done when the CD came out. Worked great. By the way, keep in mind that with mountain lion, windows XP is no longer supported in boot camp, much to my displeasure when I had to reinstall.
hello comgrads to you. i am a happy mac user. i learn lots of tricks every day.
I am using win7 so xp is not my issue but I will let those who I know whom might be moving to a mac and wanting to b boot camp it.
Keep in mind that Apple has chosen not to make PDFs accessible (no accessible PDF reader for Macs), this is unfortunate as around 80% of publically available documents online are PDF files.
There is no reason for this, except Apple´s decission not to enable or allow it.
Otherwise, yeah, Macs have a lot of cool things going on, iOS devices do a marvellous job of accessibility, and I hope this one issue can be resolved.
That was incorrect. Mac's Preview, while clunky, works for displaying PDFS. Also, some can be viewed from the quick look box (cmd+y). I use robobraille.org (online service) to convert my PDFS into a readable form.
So no doing PDF forms though? I realize kids haven't had to do that much but lots of what you'll need to do in life is PDF forms.
That's completely wrong, you can work with pdf's in preview, quick look, and in several other applications. Reading them, anyway.
I haven't tried to fill out a pdf form, but I know others who have. this, also works.
In addition, preview has a nice feature that will allow you to electronically sign documents.
I've been a mac user for over 1 year now, and will be happy to answer any questions, or get people started.
At some point, I really need to write up a quick start guide for the mac, covering setting up the macs settings for best results with voiceover.
you can contact me with any questions you have via pqn or pm on the sight.
I am also willing to skype with people in the event they would like more direct help.
Hmm, everything you've listed above should work,