All Terrain Cane

S1 (Speaker 1)

Hello everyone! Welcome to Talking Tech, this edition available from November 7th, 2023. I'm Stephen Jolley, great to have you with us listening through maybe Vision Australia Radio, Associated Stations of Australia or perhaps the Community Radio Network. There is also the podcast if you'd like to catch the podcast and haven't done so yet. All you need to do is search for the two words talking tech. And then it can come usually on a Tuesday afternoon just after it's been produced. Another option is to ask a Siri device or smart speaker to play Vision Australia radio talking tech podcast Vision Australia Radio talking tech podcast. 

With me, someone who can explain all this tech stuff really well. Vision Australia's national advisor on Access Technology, David Woodbridge - and David for once at a civilised time in our part of the world. Last Tuesday morning at 11 a.m., we were able to tune in to the most recent Apple event.

01:05

S2

We were indeed, and this one was purely a pre-recorded event. So there wasn't anybody actually at Cupertino at all. And what they announced was three new MacBook pros and a new iMac. So you've really got the M3 standard MacBook Pro, then you've got the Pro version of it, and then you've got sort of the big version of it, which is the max version of it. And then they also announced that the fact that the 24 inch iMac is also getting the M3 chip.

S1

Just to remind everyone what the iMac is.

S2

The iMac is an all in one desktop computer. So if you think about a computer has got the normally on a windows computer, you've got the the system box separate to the monitor and normally a separate speakers or part of the monitor. A iMac is an all in one computer. So you've got the the computer itself, plus the monitors all in one thing. Or you really need to do is plug in your power, attach a keyboard and mouse or trackpad and off you go. So all this new stuff now runs on Apple Silicon, as with the M1 and M2. 

And really what they were saying quite deliberately in the presentation is that the standard M3 is for your general student type person. So when you're doing, you know, essays or a bit of number crunching or composing some music, that sort of lower end stuff, the next one, the pro version of the MacBook Pro, if you like, is for people that are a little bit more number crunching, such as massive amounts of data getting more advanced into a bit of video editing and music composition and so on. They also mentioned things like working in neurology and processing that type of data and so on. Then the Max is really for your full blown videoing 4K type person where you will need the power of the processor. 

Where I came away from this event was thinking if you've already got an M1 and particularly in them to Mac, there was absolutely no need to update if you've got an internal Mac. So before the M1 came out in 2020, you might want to start to consider updating because you will notice a bit of a speed difference. But for most of us that do emailing, word processing, web browsing, a bit of podcasting on that sort of stuff, if I was going to update, I'd probably just update to the straight M3, and that's more than adequate.

S1

What did you think of the broadcast time being in prime time evening time in the United States?

S2

Well, I loved it. And of course it had the scary fast Apple event because it was around Halloween. But I love the time because it meant I could I could think about doing other work around it, and I wasn't tired. I didn't have to get up at 3 a.m. or 10 a.m. that time and listen to the keynote.

S1

But what did you think about them experimenting for the American market with the evening prime time?

S2

I thought it was great because I think there was some sort of sports thing or some other thing on, and they apparently had a fantastic logging, because every time I think people know there's an Apple keynote event on, people have to listen to it. And because you can listen on your iPhone, your iPad or wherever else you like, it's very easy to just drop in and listen to it.

S1

Any other Apple news that day we should know about?

S2

Not so much that day, but we've also had the quarterly event from Apple to do if their quarterly earnings and as expected overall their ratings are down. However their services are up. So lots of things to do with iCloud and the App Store in the Apple TV. They were making lots and lots of money. But look, every time somebody says Apple's earnings are dropping, they're still earning megabucks of money. I'm looking forward to when they're going to push the Mac, hopefully more next year, because I think sometimes they spend a lot of time on the iPhone and the. I've had. And because I'm such a, you know, a fan of the Mac. Hopefully next year they'll start pushing the Mac a lot more.

S1

And the Touch Bar has gone.

S2

Yep. It's gone. Completely gone. It was a useless invention in the first place when they first announced it back in 2010, I think it was or sometime. And we've now got normal Apple keyboards with function keys. Hooray!

05:30

S1

You got your new all terrain cane about a week or so ago. How is it?

S2

Absolutely amazing. So I thought, you know, well, extending the hand or, you know, big deal between sort of the golf grip for normal kind use and the round grip beneath that to extend it out and almost use it like a walking stuff, if you like. So I went for this very rocky stepped walk down to a point here on the Central Coast, and what I found was before I took a step, I would use the normal kind to sort of explore what I was going to step onto, and then what I would do is I'd extend the handle to make it a full extension, and then explore a little bit more beyond that step to either side, and then find a really great place where I could actually put the ball of the cane down for stability and then step. 

So using it as a walking staff. And then when I stepped down, I could then retract it back into a normal cane and do the exploration again. Now, I did have a side of person with me, because I didn't want to tumble down a steep set of stairs, but I managed to do that whole thing that I have not walked down for about 20 years by myself. So I was a little bit slow. But now that I know where I'm going, I'm going to be more confident. But just that extra extension to make sure that you're 100% safe stepping down the service that you're stepping down to, and what's on your left and right hand side as far as jobs are concerned, was absolutely amazing.

S1

Human wear delivered some updates to their Braille devices. The brilliant series, the B 20 x, the B 40 x, and then the mantis Q 40. That's the one with the coyote keyboard. So they've gone to version 2.1.0.

S2

Significant, yes, because we now have localized languages, which is basically regions that the the brilliant support. So here in Australia we can have two languages. And I think from memory it was Lisa for the female voice. And I think it was Tyler for the the male voice. But I think, Stephen, you said that you had some issues with adjusting the right for those Australian voices.

S1

Well, for any voice that wasn't the normal default voice, I was having difficulty changing the voice rate. So I think work not quite complete there. We might see an update at some stage in the future to get it right. The other interesting one, of course, is the access to the Daisy libraries, and the Vision Australia library content is now available, and that's quite an experience. Can I say, David, downloading a newspaper, having it in Braille and also being able to search for particular words through the whole document as you can with any Daisy document? Pretty good.

S2

Yeah. And I particularly like reading articles, particularly when they start using words that I haven't seen written down before. Because we're using Braille, you can double check the spelling and stuff, particularly when you've got an email, people some questions about things that you might not know how to spell because you're using speech all the time. That is a great benefit to me. Of course, with braille and literacy.

S1

Now, you discovered something interesting about price comparisons.

S2

Yes. Look, I was quite surprised by this. A quantum last week announced, or they were promoting the focus 14 version five Bluetooth Braille display from Whisperer. So that's a 14 cell braille display with some very basic note taking functions. And I thought, oh, well, you know, it's $2,900. Let me go and check out what the brilliant from Human Wear 20 cell version is selling for. Plus all the applications that supports including Daisy that we've just talked about and no taking for that matter. 

And it turns out that the human wear product is $45 more expensive, 2945 so what I've learnt from that is just don't assume that 14 cells or 20 cells or 40 cells, or roughly the same price from different manufacturers, it always is a good idea to shop around and see what bang for your buck you're getting. And depending on how many brow cells you've got in the display, plus all the applications that the actual brass display actually supports.

S1

Talking of displays, and we've been talking about the high end graphic displays in recent weeks, like the Monarch and the Dotpad, the Braille doodle that we should talk about that.

S2

Yeah. Look, it's getting closer and closer to being sold. And so what it is, if you can imagine an oversized Braille grid. So let's say, for example, it's 20 cells wide by 20 cells deep. And you've got pins in it where when you draw this magnetic stylus across it, it pulls up the pins. So literally you can do shapes of triangles and. Circles. And of course you can draw houses and all that sort of cool stuff. So it's a very quick way of producing very quick diagram or a line picture of something for a child or an adult or whatever else. And of course, you could also practice your print letters if you wanted to. You can also do Braille on it if you really wanted to. 

And then of course, when you're finished, you just take your hand or your fingers across and just push down or scrub out all the pins that are sticking up and hi presto, you can start again, Australian dollar wise, by the time it hits the market here in Australia, we are looking at about $140. So it's nice to have something that's completely mechanical, doesn't involve any electronics at all, and very quickly gives you access to shapes and diagrams so people can very quickly show you what something may look like.

10:55

S1

The very popular smartphone with buttons, the Blind Shell Classic two an update.

S2

There is an update and look, it's mainly a bugfix update, but what was interesting to me was that it also has a new function where let's say you've got a favourite web page, like going to all the time. So for me it would be like Apple VS or Shoprite in Australia, org and so on. But you can add those pages to your favorites list in that side button that you press to bring up your favorites. And I think that's a really nice idea because it saves you having to go into applications, etcetera, etcetera, and get to the web browser tool. You can simply when you're on that page. Next, add it to your favorites and then you can access it via the side button. I think that's a really great feature.

S1

Victor read a trick from human where you've got some news.

S2

It's basically coming to the end of life for the product from human wear. So I guess as of 31st of December this year, it's being discontinued officially being produced. However, Human Wear will continue to support the product for another three years. So if you're looking at having a combined daisy vector stream with a GPS, the Victor Trek part of it, then jumping now while the going's good, otherwise you'll have to end up with two separate units the vector reader stream third generation itself, and of course the stellar tracks. They'll have to carry two units around rather than one. Keeping in mind that the stellar Trek now has a lot of cool, very good high end GPS stuff in it these days.

S1

You're very famous. Exploring tech webinars seem to have gone into hibernation.

S2

They have look, these have been running for, I want to say over sort of 3 or 4 years now, and it's gotten to the stage where we sort of need to re-evaluate how are we going to start delivering people interesting or new content. So we've decided to put on hold for the moment. And in the new year, probably around about February, most likely, we'll start looking at different ways of producing content. So it might be via a web page, it might be via a podcast feed or whatever else. We're just going to basically throw ideas against the wall, see what sticks, and then I'll let people know what I'm talking to, what form it might take.

S1

We'll deal with this in more detail in coming weeks, but people might like to go somewhere for Christmas. Ideas from the vision store of Vision Australia.

S2

Indeed. So keep in mind that the cut off for guaranteed delivery is basically December 4th, so it's not that far away. I've got a link in the show notes that takes you to initially 75 different gift ideas, but yes, we're starting to run at a time, which is why we're mentioning it now. So you can have a look at those ideas or any other ideas on the web page for doing searching, and you can start ordering now.

S1

Before we go, a reminder of where there are details of what we've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program.

S2

Indeed. So as you can check out my blog site, which is David would be a dot podbean pad and.

S1

David would be dot podbean podbean to write to the program.

S2

You can write to me at Vision Australia where I work, which is David Woodbridge, how it sounds at Vision Australia-dot-org.

14:09

S1

David Dot Woodbridge at Vision Australia-dot-org. This has been talking tech, with me has been Vision Australia's national advisor on access technology David Woodbridge I'm Stephen Jolley. Take care. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.