Mac OS X VoiceOver

Apple - Mac OS X - VoiceOver is a reasonably complex set of capabilities. I found it poking around the utilities folder. It can read the interface or text.

I need to play with this more. I know a few people it might be useful for.

For example:

To read the character where the VoiceOver cursor is focused, press Control-Option-C. Press C two times to hear the character spoken phonetically. Then press Control-Option-Shift-Right Arrow or Left Arrow to move the VoiceOver cursor to the next or previous character and read it.

To read a word at a time, press Control-Option-W. Press W two times to hear the word spelled, and three times to hear it spelled phonetically. Then press Control-Option-Left Arrow or Right Arrow to read the previous or next word.

To read a line at a time, press Control-Option-L. Then press Control-Option-Up Arrow or Down Arrow to read the previous or next lines.

To read a sentence at a time, press Control-Option-S. Then press Control-Option-Page Up or Page Down to read the previous or next sentence.

To read a paragraph at a time, press Control-Option-P. Then press Control-Option-Shift-Page Up or Page Down to read the previous or next paragraph.

It's not trivial to figure out, but with practice it makes sense. In VoiceOver mode there's a black selection box that appears over the part of the screen that's being inspected. It didn't work in a Firefox window, but it worked in TextEdit. I suspect it only works with Cocoa applications.

I wonder how it compares to commercial Windows screen readers.

OS X Digital Color Meter

Aperture tricks is mandatory reading for anyone using Apple's photo management app. This tip points out an OS X utility that could be used in iPhoto too.

Aperture Tricks: Aperture Trick#20 READING RGB VALUES IN APERTURE:

... Go to your Utilities folder and open DigitalColor Meter. It's a slick
little app included with Mac OS X. In its preferences, set the
magnification factor to 8X, and check the box next to 'Float window
above other apps.' Move the diameter of the meter (called Aperture
Size) to its smallest setting. "

Update 1/12/06: It turns out DigitalColor Meter has a help file. Here's one topic:

Copying a color into an HTML or graphics document

You can use DigitalColor Meter to copy the color value of any pixel on your display into an HTML or graphics document. For example, you may want a background color on an HTML page to match a color in a graphic that overlays it.

Open DigitalColor Meter, located in /Applications/Utilities.

From the pop-up menu, choose the type of color value that matches what you need in your document. For example, if you want to use a color in an HTML page, set the type of color value to RGB As Hex Value, 8-bit.

Drag the Aperture Size slider to the desired size. Reduce the aperture size until you can accurately pick a single color without including other colors. If more than one color is within the aperture, the color value of the pixels will be averaged.

Point to the color that you want to copy, then press Shift-Command-C to copy the color values of the pixels.

Open your document and set the insertion point where you want to place the color value, then choose Edit > Paste.

To hold the current color as you move the pointer, press Shift-Command-H. Press Shift-Command-H again to release the hold. You can also use the arrow keys to move the aperture in single-pixel increments.

You can also use the preferences to tell DCM to display your mouse pointer coordinates; they update as you move across the screen. Version 3.4. Where the heck did this little thing come from? It feels like a labor of love. I'll use it with iPhoto starting now!

Selected iPhoto 6 tech notes

This query may display up to 250 or so iPhoto tech notes -- or it might not!

• Gordon's Tech: iPhoto 6: tech notes

It took a lot of retries, changing number displayed, etc, to finally browse the entire collection. I think Apple's servers are still updating.

• What's new: not Library merging, alas! At least, not documented. I just can't understand why this doesn't make the list.
• You still can't add shared photos to a Library
• There's an option to save edited RAW images as 16 bit TIFF
• You can create and edit rolls, I don't know if that moves files around one's hard drive.
• iPhoto is not Aperture -- one note says it really works best with JPEG images
• Control key lets you compare image to original
• There's a 'create library' menu item.
• Advanced options: don't import images to library when adding, you can assign a color profile on import to a particular image
  

I am beginning to think that Apple considers "library merge" to be a hard cutoff between iPhoto and Aperture. If you need to manipulate multiple Libraries, you need Aperture. Absurd. I have no other explanation for why this is not supported however.

China conquers bloglines

My bloglines feed now thinks I read Mandarin Chinese. Has China quietly acquired them?

I suspect it will be fixed shortly ...

iPhoto 6: tech notes

[There's something odd going on with this Apple search, sometimes when I run it I get nothing of interest. It's as though Apple is just now propagating these files across their servers.]

Apple - Support - Search Results - iPhoto 6

Lots of tech notes.

I would NOT touch iPhoto 6 for at least a month. It's a really big update. Apple's big updates, at least of their consumer software, tend to have hideous bugs.

Apple is a bleeding edge kind of company, and early adopters should think of themselves as major blood donors. Of course I do appreciate the sacrifice of my friends who forge ahead ...

Sound splitter with volume control

SmartShare - Griffin Technology

I want one.

Fix for some sound output problems in OS X

This is worth checking for ...

macosxhints - A simple fix for sound output issues

My 2GHz iMac G5 ... has been giving me some problems with sound playback. This has been occuring only with certain applications, such as Quick Time Player, Windows Media Player, and even iChat would stop playing sounds every now and then.

there is something quite simple that fixes this problem. This Apple KnowledgeBase document explains the problem and solution:

"Some audio applications may change your computer's audio settings to a sample rate that is too high for other applications to use. In this situation, system alert sounds still work, and does iTunes, but other applications may have no sound."

Now, I don't know which application would have changed my settings, but the fix is quite simple. You simply open /Applications -> Utilities -> Audio MIDI Setup and change the output settings to 44100.0 Hz (the iMac supports up to 96600 Hz).

Microsoft's five year deal - sad news

MS to ship Mac Office of five years 'minimum' | The Register:

Beyond the tweaks, the agreement will Apple is interesting, and may scotch rumours that Apple is working on a full-scale productivity suite to rival Office. Apple certainly has to have a contingency plan in place should Microsoft ever drop Mac support, but the agreement announced this week means it has five years to develop something of its own, or see how OpenOffice development proceeds.

No money changes hands, we are told. On the other hand, iWorks doesn't include 'Numbers' and AppleWorks won't be ported to MacTel. This deal came with a real pricetag.

It's probably the best deal Jobs could get, but it's disappointing all the same.

MyVu video googles for iPod: Cringely's prediction?

The PBS web sites are down again (they've been having awful trouble lately), so I can't check the Cringely column directly. Some time last fall he predicted Apple would acquire a company that had technology to display video images on the retina (laser painting of the retina).

So is the MyVu personal media viewer what Cringely meant? I don't think so. This is from the PR:

MicroOptical proved the myvu™ viewer’s ability to deliver portable video in France, where under the Orange brand it is paired by France Telecom with a Samsung D600 cell phone,” said Mark Spitzer, CEO of MicroOptical. “We chose Macworld as the venue to debut the product in the U.S. because of the overwhelming response Apple has had for its video iPod. As the iPod changes the way people experience video, the myvu™ viewer will accelerate its adoption by providing hands free, head-up access to a large virtual image. The myvu™ viewer makes watching portable video more practical.

This sounds more like a conventional video display. Interesting form factor. They need to get this accepted by the young adult market before old guys will dare to wear them.

Running XP apps on MacTel hardware

We won't be able to dual boot XP on MacTel hardware because Apple is using Intel's BIOS replacement - EFI. (EFI is the foundation for Intel's DRM architecture; I still believe DRM was the real driver of the MacTel deal. The more vociferously Apple denies this the more confident I am that it's true.) Vista (aka Windows XP Service Pack 3) may support this, but perhaps not this year.

So can we run better/faster XP emulators? I thought this was unlikely in the near future, but a Macintouch contributor feels there's hope (though perhaps not from Virtual PC):

Macs on Intel (Part 6)

Dave Schroeder

... What we will *definitely* see are "Virtual PC"-like programs that let you run Windows alongside OS X (in a Window, or taking over the screen, etc., with a hotkey to flip back and forth, for example).

It's important to note this will NOT be emulation: Windows will run at the native speed of the underlying hardware.

vmware already has a version for Mac OS X in development, and Microsoft may even make a version of Virtual PC. Then there are things like QEMU, Xen, etc. The Darwin/Mac OS X version of WINE, DarWINE, has even been working under betas of Mac OS X for Intel. Now that Intel Macs are shipping, it will only be a matter of weeks/months before we have several options for running Windows itself, and/or Windows applications at the native speed of the underlying hardware.

"Dual booting" might not be possible initially, because Windows XP doesn't support EFI (the "next generation" of BIOS from Intel, which Apple used on these machines), but Vista does, for example. And since EFI is the future, it's only a matter of time before x86 OSes and bootloaders start supporting it. For more information on EFI: Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI)

But, in my opinion, dual booting is annoying anyway, and the really interesting thing will be able to just run Windows and Mac OS X side-by-side.

Further, Phil Schiller reiterated that Apple isn't doing anything to prevent people from installing other OSes and Intel has communicated that Apple isn't using proprietary Intel chipsets.

As for the lack of S-Video on the MacBook Pro: S-Video output is possible from the DVI connector via an adapter; there is no longer a dedicated miniDIN-4 port.

I think the new iMac is very interesting as an Aperture or Video machine. - particularly because of the imaging system. On the other hand the new PowerBooks don't make sense to me -- unless they'll run Windows applications very well. Then they make sense.

First MacTel glitch: 10.3.9 disk utility not compatible with Universal binaries?

[Updated with fix]
I'm sure this is only the tip of the iceberg. I hope someone will provide a utility to strip out the Intel portions of the universal binaries (as was done in the old PowerPC transition) days.

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh

Another reader describes a possible Panther compatibility issue with Intel-compatible software:

[MacInTouch Reader] Looks to me like Disk Utility for 10.3.9 is unable to deal properly with a Universal Binary file.... I got the Disk Utility disconnect error when repairing permissions on a 10.3.9 system, and the console log error about iTunes. When I compared the upgraded iTunes to one that hadn't been, I saw the binary in the folder used to be 7.7 MB and is now 17.3 MB, so I'm guessing iTunes is now a Universal Binary, and that Disk Utility for 10.3.x needs an update now.

Update 1/13: Macintouch reports this temporary fix works:

Ian Waterston

If you've got 10.3.9 or earlier, and downloaded iTunes 6.02 and hit a problem with running Permissions Repair using Disk Utility (and many people have...) then the fix that seems to work ..God knows why... is, to quote from the relevant Apple Support Forum...

"Go to HD>Library>Receipts and trash all iTunes .pkg files EXCEPT for iTunesX.pkg and iTunesPhoneDriver.pkg"

It's been a total fix for me. Er... why? Greater minds than mine will doubtless know the answer to that question.

No XP on MacTel machines - Vista maybe?

BetaNews | XP Won't Run on Intel MacBook, iMac

The new machines use Intel's BIOS alternative - EFI. Makes sense from a platform perspective, but XP won't run on this. Vista probably will. So the Intel Macs won't run dual boot XP. They'd need something like VirtualPC or at least a BIOS emulator. I doubt we'll see a reliable solution this year.

Vista maybe.

Interesting DRM implications.

Why we won't see JPEG2000 used much in cameras

I'd long been frustrated that JPEG 2000, a theoretically much superior compression format, was not showing up as an option in digital cameras. There are many reasons, but a usenet discussion, to which I added a 'yes' comment, points to power consumption. Power issues are big in every disconnected digital device nowadays, and heat (the corollary) is an issue in every connected device.

Google Groups : rec.photo.digital - Why is jpeg 2000 not in common use?

31. Martin Brown
Dec 20 2005, 12:21 pm show options
Newsgroups: rec.photo.digital

peter wrote:

" jpeg 2000 is superior to common jpeg and is supposedly licence fee free. Why is it not in common use, especially when digital camera file sizes are going up?"

It isn't better by a significantly large factor at high quality settings to be worth the upheaval. J2k encoders are slow and power hungry. JPEG is fast and extremely well optimised for use in digicams now.

In essence J2k isn't enough of an improvement to become mainstream. This may change one day, but don't hold your breath.

---

32. John Faughnan
Subject: Re: why is jpeg 2000 not in common use?

Martin,

I asked a similar question about JPEG 2000 a while back:

My question also produced a range of responses, but none felt satisfactory to me. As I read more about the power drains on large sensor cameras I gradually settled on the explanation you have succinctly presented.

So, I just want to say, for what it's worth, that you've summarized the issues very well. I even read a report of a theoretical JPEG conversion optimization that reduced power drains by more than one order of magnitude. JPEG 2000 is computationally intensive, and the cost of storage has fallen much faster than the power-cost of computation.

The latest versions of Adobe Acrobat can use JPEG 2000 to compress documents. It's a great format for that as it maintains edges much better than JPEG at very high compression values, and documents can be huge and costly to transmit. It may even show up for sharing images on the web (I hope so!). Alas, in camera JPEG 2000 seems to be doomed.

meta: jfaughnan, jgfaughnan, digital camera, compression, JPEG2000, standards adoption

Apple joins the spyware world

Boing Boing breaks the news. Apple's iTunes update quietly added the 'feature' of monitoring music played so Apple can suggest similar songs. This was not clearly stated during the install. Closing the 'mini-store' turns it off.

The Dark Side of Steve Jobs is to be feared. I've long felt that the only thing worse than Bill Gates ruling the world of personal computing would have been to have Steve Jobs in charge. Jobs is best when he's a distant #2, which is a good reason to hope Microsoft does claw back market share from the iPod.

So how bad IS MacBook battery life?

Thurott is unaffected by the reality distortion field. He's put up a very nice table comparing the PowerBook and MacBook. He particularly notes the curious absence of any data on battery life.

Paul Thurrott's Internet Nexus: Comparing the MacBook Pro to the PowerBook G4

Balm to the soul of current G4 owners. The G4 was quite power efficient. Heh, heh.

Update 1/11: Looks like 4 hours or less with a fresh battery. Comparable to Dell, worse than current PowerBooks. Speed has a price.