Category: accessible Devices
I can't figure out how to sue the IPod app store on my computer. I just can't make it work with JAWS. Any advice or instructions you can give me would be appreciated.
Which version of Jaws do you have?
Ten and eleven, I can use either one.
I don't use it from my pc - I buy all my apps from my phone and then just sinc them all to itunes when I sinc my phone.
Obviously this will only work for you if you have wi-fi that you connect to on your ipod touch.
hth.
Most people I know use their phone or other iOS device to do this. It's not a blind or sighted thing: it's just easier on the device.
so agree Leo
The future of the Mobile Web, and the web for that matter, is in apps. I could get into the explanation of it and be booed off here / summarily called whatever it is for 'odd' conversations, if I did, but suffice it to say a well-designed app store (Apple's store and the Android Market) are your hub for acquiring the apps.
Each app does one thing and one thing only, with few exceptions. So why this rather than the universal browser that was supposed to save us all and be a virtual wet dream for deployment? Well apps are designed by developers when all too many times web sites are designed by designers / marketing people for one thing. What that means is you get lost on a site and have to hunt around just because someone wanted to come along and be cute and change how it looked. That is *not* a blind or reader thing: sighted people have this happen at least as often as you do. Often your reader compensates in ways I won't get into on here.
But anyway, we developers think about tasks: What you want to do, say, when you go shopping. So we see your experience from when you start the app, through your browsing the store, and into Checkout, through the various stages of checking out where it branches off, when you experience problems and how they get answered. Sorry to belabor that, but that's just the way it is, sorry web people: I've been in software for fifteen years and made my start in the Internet industry. What we called Crossware in the mid 1990s, which became RIA (Rich Internet Applications) in early 2000s has and will become individual apps.
Basically an app communicates with your server one way, has to be approved on your device in one form (Apple being restrictive). So even if a picture changes, the steps to perform a given task in the app don't change that much.
Another problem with web designers is inherent in the plugins they use. Web designers have no concept of footprint (the size of the device you're on), memory, process priority (who usurps whom when multiple things are vying for attention), hence all the really slow web sites. And I see you kiddies blaming the reader for this all the time on here when in reality it's a combination of factors, but very often a web designer who can't craft a simple for loop properly so the process gets stuck (when your computer just grinds away when loading a page since the author was far too much the fool to set and unset timers properly).
So all that rant and rage against the machine to say apps on Mobile are winning:
Apple knows it, Google / Android knows it, and Guess who? Blackberry. Yup, Research In Motion knows it, and their development platform is now more used than ever to deploy applications for enterprise users using the BlackBerry. Everything from banks to radio stations, from 24-hour Fitness to grocery stores are developing these babies and I'd gladly throw down money and cigars on the apps winning in the Mobile marketplace. And this coming from a guy who was sold on the Rich Internet Applications technologies (formerly Crossware). But many of us weren't accounting for the idiot wannabes developing sites 99% of the time.
So, with your apple device because it has a reader that's part of the core, bust your skinny little ass, spend that youthful energy, and learn to use the app store because you will be at an extreme advantage. Not just with the toys, but at work.
Five years and you'll see these puppies, be they Android or Apple, outselling netbooks and laptopls. Again, I'd put cigars and money on this. Our biggest problem is the ridicule-ass infrastructure we don't have for mobile networks: data plans that don't make sense, outmoded server technologies on the carriers, definitely the subject of another time.
But Apple was a total fool to make an exclusive deal with AT&T. Remember Nokia? The platform all the kiddies make fun of? The one selling 86% of phones in 2009? That platform could be bought unlocked.
Apple will be, IMHO, eventually. They peddled and proclaimed a lot of tomfoolery long before the iPhone ever entered the blind space. But they'll have to unwimp themselves and deal, because they're not the dinky little exclusive artsy-fartsy club anymore: They're a major player. And this is what comes with being a major player.
So definitely get to know your app store, how to use it, how ti install and uninstall applications, and equally important, how to search effectively for applications. Apple's search is still the best out there in mobile markets so you've good technology to back it. And for us as blind people, this really changes the game, since the platform basically works. But with the newfound freedom comes newfound responsibility: There was a time when no sighted person expected a blind user to use Windows or the web. Now employers and educators alike have the right to expect from us that we can. So now, if I can get me what amounts to a virtual set of eyes that does a basic scan / read of basic mail and stuff, or package recognition using a combination of technologies (some of it crowdsourcing), people will expect that we be able to, and that with good reason.
The ticket is in how well you learn to manage your apps / learn to search and use the App Store.
Sorry for the long post but this is what's coming.
I've never actually tried that in all the months since I bought my Touch. Admittedly funds for purchasing aps have been a bit short so that partly explains it.
i sometimes use the app store icon on my touch, but mainly control app buying via my mac which works really well with it.
well whether it's on the pc or the device, your apps are definitely the way to go. And BryanP, the apps are in large part free, the ones I'm speaking of, or they cost precious little now - just a few dollars.
Yeah but when you're unemployed even "a few dollars" can be a bit hard to come by. But we'll see one of these days I'm sure.
start with the free apps, which are numerous and useful. OMoby won't cost you anything and neither will SayIt.
i think u mean say text. yeah i have had an iPhone for months and have abot 3 pages of free apps as i haven[t paid for an app yet. I agree how hard a few bucks for apps can be to come by.
I stand corrected SayText it is: was just helping someone this weekend over Skype and found out my mistake there.
I used to just go throughtha ap store on the iPhone rather than connecting it to the computer. The time I really connected up to the computer was to put music on the iPhone. Other than that I just downloaded or bought the aps using the iPhone.
Like others have said, you can use the app store on the Touch. I'm not sure how to get to the app store itself on the PC because I usually type the name in the serch box. A quicker way to get to the various sections of iTunes such as the search box, source list and the main section is with f6. Hopes this helps some.