new mac user

Category: Geeks r Us

Post 1 by starfly (99956) on Tuesday, 04-Dec-2012 8:49:32

So for those who know me and know how much I love apple coffs!, lol, I will admit I love my new mac book pro. No :) I am not giving up my android phone, I love it to as well but lets get to the topic at hand. How in the world! do you get time/date, battery status and last but not least answer skype? I am so!!! excited to have this computer, it kills anything I have my place at this time. Well hugs to all any help would be appreciated. :) I did search apple this but came up empty for my two questions.

Post 2 by starfly (99956) on Tuesday, 04-Dec-2012 8:52:29

Oh, there was aboard like this but its locked, yes I tried to post to it but because its locked there is no way to post to a locked board.

Post 3 by BigDogDaddy (Help me, I'm stuck to my chair!) on Tuesday, 04-Dec-2012 9:19:44

Go to the status menu by pressing voiceover M twice quickly, THat should bring up the menu that shows wireless bluetooth battery and time and date.

Post 4 by starfly (99956) on Tuesday, 04-Dec-2012 13:12:19

Okay last question for this topic I think!, how in the world do you download programs off the web? I went to download drop box but when I pressed voice over+space bar it just open the link and kicked me back to the web page.

Post 5 by Nicky (And I aprove this message.) on Tuesday, 04-Dec-2012 18:34:32

I might be getting a mac book pro air in a couple of weeks and if not then than in a couple of months for sureso I should be posting here for help too.

Post 6 by rusty81 (Zone BBS is my Life) on Tuesday, 04-Dec-2012 22:36:07

press controll F8 for clock status etc and right/left arrow to navigate.
I don't know if they change it, but i'm still using snow leopard

Post 7 by season (the invisible soul) on Wednesday, 05-Dec-2012 2:18:34

Hi there, When i first saw this topic i thought it will be some sort of smashing apple or something. Joking. lol.

Starfly, Well come to have a bite of the Apple. hehehe. no, i do enjoy my Nexus7 and Galaxy Nexus to a point. :)
For most if not all accessibility guides and helps and tips, go to

www.applevis.com

Hope this help.
PS: Glad you enjoy your MBP

Post 8 by BigDogDaddy (Help me, I'm stuck to my chair!) on Wednesday, 05-Dec-2012 9:45:57

Typically that means the download process has begun.
Check your downloads folder and I bet it'll be there.
To do this,
Press command Shift H for the home folder, interact with the list, Voice shift down arrow, and then VO down arrow until you hear downloads, you can press right arrow to open this folder, and continue onward with VO down arrow to see what's in the folder.
Hope this helps.

Post 9 by starfly (99956) on Wednesday, 05-Dec-2012 11:11:48

buttercup hug, lol, well you have win8 microsoft and best buy shoving win8 down our throats, so I chose a mac for this reason. I can VM ware windows and still have OS as my main system operating system. :) I do actually like moutain lion a lot its auto correct as your typing is nice!!. Big dog daddy thanks for your help so far :) very much appreciate it.

Post 10 by starfly (99956) on Wednesday, 05-Dec-2012 13:07:04

Okay this is odd, the drop box application tends to close when menimised which is fine but how do you get it to expand and open?

Post 11 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Wednesday, 05-Dec-2012 14:19:32

I also saw on Twitter that you can push Command shift D to open Downloads folder directly.

Post 12 by JawsGeek (Newborn Zoner) on Thursday, 06-Dec-2012 2:25:51

when you get a skype call, the call windows is in focused. to answer calls from this windows, press accept, or accept with video. note, the latter options won't appear unless you are getting a video call.

Post 13 by Striker (Consider your self warned, i'm creative and offensive like handicap porn.) on Friday, 07-Dec-2012 9:11:30

there are a lot of settings you probably should activate to make the experience easier. I'll make a list in the future, but I wouldn't be aposed to skyping for an hour or so to get you completely set up with things like commanders, to check the time and date with one key stroke, quick nav settings for the web, and more.
Dropbox is always open, it runs in the background and you can interact with it/check its status in the menu extras. to get to that point, you hit VO M twice.
to install apps, just move them to the applications folder on the root drive. this works 90 percent of the time, though some apps come with installers.
Dropbox for example is one.
If the installer isn't access friendly, there are a few tips and tricks you can use to get it installed.

Post 14 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Friday, 07-Dec-2012 17:39:03

Are you saying to install an app you just move the dmg file to the applications folder? You don't extract it there?

Post 15 by booklover256 (Veteran Zoner) on Friday, 07-Dec-2012 23:45:59

NOt in most cases. Also, I would reccomend a track pad. I didn't like learning all of the windows keyboard commands and mac ones. Trackpad makes my life so much simpler. If you need any help I got my mac about four months ago, and no what's challenging to beginners. The other thing is you have to interact with something to get inside it. That sounded like an issue you may be having. TO interact the track pad gesture is two finger, right flick. also, you can turn voiceoer hints on in the voiceover utility which may help. TO get to this, you can go to Spotlight search by hitting command space bar, then type voice. That's the fastest way. Good luck

Post 16 by Nicky (And I aprove this message.) on Saturday, 08-Dec-2012 0:17:04

Hey, I am going to get a mac book air in a week or so and I am wondering how well things works wiht VO like pages, and numbers?

someone told me that many things don't work as well with the mac andVO like they would with a PC and JAWS but I am thinking this isn't so true?
What works best with VO pages and numbers, or Windows for the Mac? Please help with any extra tips. Thanks.

Post 17 by hardyboy09 (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Saturday, 08-Dec-2012 0:58:03

I just got a Mac. Can't get use to the OS, though. Help, please.

Post 18 by Striker (Consider your self warned, i'm creative and offensive like handicap porn.) on Saturday, 08-Dec-2012 18:36:05

no, you open the dmg with vo space, cmd down arrow or cmd o.
then, you coppy the .app file to your applications folder.

Ok, for all you new/potential mac users. drop your questions here, and i'll get to them as I can.
you can also pqn or pm me here. If people require it/want to get up and running quickly, depending on my free time, I may be able to sit down with you and give you an intro/get vo set up well enough for you to start using it well.

Post 19 by booklover256 (Veteran Zoner) on Sunday, 09-Dec-2012 19:13:14

also, you can call or add me on skype for help. My skype name is melinda.doyle. Pages, numbers, and keynote work with VO extremely well. Some things are better with jaws on the pc, and some things are better with VO on the mac. It just depends.

Post 20 by hardyboy09 (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Monday, 10-Dec-2012 22:03:05

Hello all,

I'd prefer for one of you guys to help me. Just tell me when you are available. I have finals this week. Got a good book from Triumph Technology, written by Earl Harrison. Seems pretty good but haven't had a lot of time to use it.

Post 21 by pianoplayer4jesus (the Zone BBS remains forever my home page) on Thursday, 13-Dec-2012 11:14:32

I'm considering buying a mac and I want to know if voiceover can be routed to bluetooth or usb from the main output, leaving the main audio playing.

Post 22 by JawsGeek (Newborn Zoner) on Thursday, 13-Dec-2012 14:34:22

yes bit can. Mountain Lion is required for this to work. go to sound in vo utility and select your device from the imput pupub button. I did this for my apple tv, and it works great. if you need any help, skype me. my skype name is daniel.angus.macdonald

Post 23 by pianoplayer4jesus (the Zone BBS remains forever my home page) on Thursday, 13-Dec-2012 15:42:49

Thanks for the info. My husband and I were considering buying a mac so we just wanted to know.

Post 24 by starfly (99956) on Friday, 14-Dec-2012 15:15:17

Thanks for all of the older mac users adding to this board, I will add some of you to skype soon this weekend and have at it with the mac. As for pages, call me odd but I liked open office a lot better then I do pages but its probly because I am new to pages and the mac. Open office has a look and feel I am used to using in MS. Office for windows.

Post 25 by Jesse (Hmm!) on Saturday, 15-Dec-2012 14:31:02

There are plenty of us Mac users out here, and especially in Lion and Mountain Lion, the learning curve is not too awful, as most everything about the experience can be customized to your liking.

Post 26 by pianoplayer4jesus (the Zone BBS remains forever my home page) on Sunday, 16-Dec-2012 23:07:48

I just got a mac for Christmas so was wondering what kinds of games work with it? I think rs games does but other than that not sure of anything else.

Post 27 by pianoplayer4jesus (the Zone BBS remains forever my home page) on Sunday, 16-Dec-2012 23:09:11

also forgot to mention can one play the zone on it? Can you play the games and still hear sounds? I was told mac didn't support flash so wasn't sure if that would be an issue.

Post 28 by rat (star trek rules!) on Monday, 17-Dec-2012 20:58:30

the zone doesn't use flash so it works perfectly. I myself am a pretty good mac user, the ways to contact me are in my profile, and i'm more than happy tohelp those who need it.

Post 29 by LeoGuardian (You mean there is something outside of this room with my computer in it?) on Monday, 17-Dec-2012 21:23:27

Starfly. Glad to hear this about OpenOffice. I had thought it was not VoiceOver usable for us. Glad to be wrong.
That's the solution I intend to put on the wife's mac, once I can buy her one, though the daughter's will come first. Will probably put iWork on that one just in case the colleges want something that OpenOffice doesn't have. Neither of them will depend upon the VoiceOver, though, except for their dependence upon me to set things up.
Dono what it says about my parenting, but the daughter frequently says something along the lines of "That's why I call you, Dad." or "I can just call you."

Post 30 by starfly (99956) on Tuesday, 18-Dec-2012 0:22:18

No problem I've been looking for an office program when I first started on that, it was told to me that pages and a few others were assessable. I did
Pages, OpenOffice is more like Microsoft Office and my opinion.

Post 31 by Reyami (I've broken five thousand! any more awards going?) on Friday, 21-Dec-2012 5:09:42

I would like to have one keystroke for checking the time, another for the date, etc, but am not sure how to set this up. can someone please walk me through how to get that going? I am also curious about getting VoiceOver to read columns and rows in the Numbers application, and woudl like to learn more about using Keynote. I am running the latest version of mountain Lion on my Mac mini.

Post 32 by rat (star trek rules!) on Friday, 21-Dec-2012 9:43:10

there are some apple scripts that might be able to help you check time and date with one key press, i'm not totally sure. It's not all that hard to jump to the menu bar though, pressing control f8, and arrowing once or twice to the left.

Post 33 by hardyboy09 (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Friday, 21-Dec-2012 22:29:17

Thanks for all the support. Will have to Skype some of you soon.

Post 34 by Jesse (Hmm!) on Saturday, 22-Dec-2012 11:43:04

Actually, to get one key access to time and date, simply turn on Keyboard Commander in Voiceover preference pane, and the keystroke that it's assigned to is right-option key T. I use it all the time.

Post 35 by season (the invisible soul) on Saturday, 22-Dec-2012 19:13:31

One of the great Apple support page for VO user is
http://help.apple.com/voiceover/info/guide/10.7/English.lproj/index.html
That will get you started with some common keystrokes.
I found that IWork is not that hard, ones you get use to it. Haven't try open office on Mac, got it on one of the pc, and didn't like it much.
Uncle Leo, as far as your daughter is concern, there's MSOffice for Mac available for Mac User as well. Its the same price as IWorks, however it does not support voiceover. Which, in your daughter's case, not too much of an issue i would have think.

Post 36 by rat (star trek rules!) on Saturday, 22-Dec-2012 21:39:12

ahh the keyboard commander, i really must do more research on that.

Post 37 by Reyami (I've broken five thousand! any more awards going?) on Sunday, 23-Dec-2012 10:38:08

Keyboard commander? Where? i'm looking in preference panes and don't see it.

Post 38 by pianoplayer4jesus (the Zone BBS remains forever my home page) on Sunday, 23-Dec-2012 22:59:51

I've figured out how to copy a file but am not sure how to paste it to a folder. i'm a new mac user so am still learning all these new commands after having windows for quite some time.

Post 39 by rat (star trek rules!) on Monday, 24-Dec-2012 11:20:11

the command to past is command v, and keyboard commander is a voiceover tool, look in voiceover utility in the commanders grouping

Post 40 by Nicky (And I aprove this message.) on Monday, 24-Dec-2012 22:21:57

Hey you guys. i just got my mac book air today and am trying to learn to use it. I am not very far in to my learning with everything but I am running in to a couple of issues.
When I went to the app store it said that there were 5 new things to be updated, it was stuff i had preinstaled friday, pages, numbers so on so on... So why did i have to get it all updated? It was for December 4 on a few of them.
Also, where do i find pages and stuff, I am not seeing it anywhere but I might not be looking all over.

Thanks.
my skype should be in my profile, if not I will add it later but let em know if your wanting to add me. thanks again

Post 41 by Nicky (And I aprove this message.) on Monday, 24-Dec-2012 22:28:00

Oh, and i forgot to ad that when I updated the stuff, os 6.02 and pages, numbers, keynote whatever why to spell it so on so on,,,
it is frozen on the update, think I might have paused it but not sure. has been like that for about seven hours now. Any tips?

Post 42 by KC8PNL (The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.) on Wednesday, 26-Dec-2012 10:47:21

Nicky:
The easiest way to find anything, without even having to remember keyboard commands is to hit command space to bring up Spotlight search" type in pages, and then press enter. The app should be the first search result. TO quickly jump to a list of the installed applications, press command shift A. As for your other question about updates, I have no idea. Most likely the apps were installed but not updated for some reason. Try restarting the Mac and see if that helps. You could always do a force quit on the app store and restart it, but I can't recall the keyboard command to do this at the moment. I'm finally seriously diving into the world of the Mac, so I'm sure I'll have questions as well. In fact, I'll post one in my next message.

Post 43 by KC8PNL (The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.) on Wednesday, 26-Dec-2012 10:50:23

Ok, so among the things I like about the mac is the ability to control the machine almost exclusively by use of my braille display. however, there are some commands that I can't seem to program the display to do. I know that you can assign keyboard commands to your braille display under braille in the VoiceOver preferences pannel under braille, but was told that I can only use VoiceOver specific commands. SO, since, for example, command Q is an OS command and not one associated with VO, is it correct that I cannot assign a command on my braille display to this? Thanks for any help!

Post 44 by KC8PNL (The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.) on Wednesday, 26-Dec-2012 10:52:33

Sorry, one more post from me... As for games, Change Reaction, which is available in the App Store, is also accessible.

Post 45 by Nicky (And I aprove this message.) on Wednesday, 26-Dec-2012 11:16:27

KC8PNL

Hey thanks. I am glad to learn about the things you mentchened in your post. I stopped the updates and was able to restart my mac. I have gone in and re updated them and it worked fine. I am really learning a lot but find a few things a bit tricky to figure out. I am now trying to get my itunes on it. I am sure I will figure this out soon enough too. Thanks

Does your braille display have typing keys on it? What moddle do you have?

Post 46 by Striker (Consider your self warned, i'm creative and offensive like handicap porn.) on Wednesday, 26-Dec-2012 12:29:49

I'm betting all your apps are up to date. Try hitting cmd r in the app store window. If they are, you'll see text telling you that "all apps are up to date."

on the subject of copy paste, when you go to paste, if you add the option key to the command, it will cut/move the file to the location you are going to paste in to.

Post 47 by Striker (Consider your self warned, i'm creative and offensive like handicap porn.) on Wednesday, 26-Dec-2012 12:32:59

Scott, you may be able to get around that, with some keyboard commanders and a bit of apple script.
I don't own a braille display or i'd give it a shot.

Post 48 by Nicky (And I aprove this message.) on Wednesday, 26-Dec-2012 12:49:52

how do you get VO to stop talking. with jaws you hit the control key but what to do with VO?

How to check time and battory life? I think you can set up short cut keys so you can just do a quick command and find out? Or am i wrong.

Post 49 by Nicky (And I aprove this message.) on Wednesday, 26-Dec-2012 12:53:41

for some reason the command space, and the shift command A doesn't work?

Post 50 by KC8PNL (The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.) on Thursday, 27-Dec-2012 14:59:47

To mute VoiceOver, press control once. With VO, this actually acts as a pause key until you move the cursor to another location. So if you hit it 2 times instead of one, it temperarily pauses it to the point where you may not even notice. Checking time and date can be done with right options key D, assuming you have keyboard commander active.
As for the braille display I'm using, it's a HIMS Braille Edge 40. I really like it!

Post 51 by pianoplayer4jesus (the Zone BBS remains forever my home page) on Friday, 28-Dec-2012 10:11:03

So what are apple scripts and how are they used? I thought about using them but want to get more familiar with all the commands for everything.

Post 52 by pianoplayer4jesus (the Zone BBS remains forever my home page) on Friday, 28-Dec-2012 10:11:12

So what are apple scripts and how are they used? I thought about using them but want to get more familiar with all the commands for everything.

Post 53 by Nicky (And I aprove this message.) on Saturday, 29-Dec-2012 2:14:28

How do you check to see if the keyboard commander is active?

So does the left and right option keys have different functions at times/ That is interesting.

Post 54 by Nicky (And I aprove this message.) on Saturday, 29-Dec-2012 2:27:40

hey, i wanted to say I figured out how to turn on the key board commander. thanks.

Post 55 by starfly (99956) on Monday, 31-Dec-2012 21:39:07

How is this done? turning on the keyboard commander under voice over?

Post 56 by Nicky (And I aprove this message.) on Tuesday, 01-Jan-2013 12:54:17

hey. i have been able to do a lot with my mac but I ran in to the issue of installing RS games on it. It says that i can only install apps from the app store. Could I be installing it wrong or something?

Post 57 by starfly (99956) on Tuesday, 01-Jan-2013 14:39:09

so I found the place where I can turn on keyboar commaner but out side of time and date what else can this allow a person to do with voice over?