Apple's tricky Hallowe'en treats

00:08

S1 (Speaker 1)

Hello everyone! Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from October 31st, 2023. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have you with us. Wherever you're listening may be through Virgin Australia Radio, Associated Stations of Australia or perhaps the Community Radio Network. There is also the podcast. The way to catch that is to search for the two words talking tech and down a canal come usually on a Tuesday afternoon just after it's been produced. Another option is to ask your 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 adviser on access technology, David Woodbridge David, let's start with the Apple event that took place this morning, Tuesday morning. And people can hear that if they'd like to at some stage.

S2

Indeed. And we'll talk about it more in depth next week. But if you want to catch up on all the scary information that was revealed today, then I would go to your trusted internet resource. So things like Applebee's, I'm showing the The Tech Doctor blog and podcast will do something. So if you want to get a full rundown, that would be the resources that I would go to.

S1

You better let people into the joke. Why it was scary information?

S2

Because it's actually Halloween, so that's why it's a scary event, I think. I think the title was actually Fast Scary Event.

S1

And for those of us who've been trying all their lives to resist Halloween, well, tough. We'll just have to live with it this time.

S2

Indeed.

S1

iOS and other software products had updates come down last week.

S2

Yep. So 17.1 for iOS and of course iPad I OS was released. Lots and lots of bug fixes. So one of the major ones was of course the weather focus issue with locations jumping all over the place and you couldn't read the weather properly. There was a few to do things to do with messages and so on. Well, now they've been fixed. So if you go and check out the link that I've got for Apple in the show notes, they always got this warning at the top. When a major release is released, like 16 or 17, you're bound to have lots and lots of bugs. And normally by a point one release, they've got most of the bugs ironed out. 

So if you've been a bit nervous about should I update or now is a bit more of a safer time to update, everything's pretty much stable. There's a few bugs floating around, but not too horrendous and as far as watch is concerned. So Apple Watch 10.1 the famous two finger pinch, or the double tap as they call it, is now raring to go. So that's where when you do a pinch with your fingers, it will activate a default button on the Apple Watch interface. 

So for example, the one that I keep mentioning is the fact that you can do a two finger pinch to to answer a call and to hang up a phone call. So it just means that you could really operate your upper watch hands free, including answering and hanging up a phone call.

S1

And a long promised airdrop enhancement is now active for iOS.

S2

This one's actually really cool. So normally when you do an AirDrop, it's practically via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and then if that's not finished because it's a large light, so it's a large photo or something like that, it will continue over the internet, which I find is actually really clever. So if you've been a bit wary about using AirDrop, particularly when you have to leave the house, don't be nervous. It will actually continue going on until it's complete.

S1

Very good. Now there's this movement around the world, really, to put mobile phones away from kids when they're at school. I remember when I was a kid, transistors were banned at school. I see it as just an extension of that.

S2

I think that's quite true. Yeah. I've put a US article in the show notes, and of course, when you go to high school these days, you put your mobile phone in a pouch and you're not allowed to access your mobile phone throughout the whole day, they completely banned. And of course, what the the positive people are saying about this is that people are actually engaging more so when they're in the lunchroom or the canteen or the playground. They're actually talking to each other and having a great time, rather than looking at their phone screens all the time. 

I'm in two minds about it because I think, you know, really people should learn how to control their, you know, their smartphone or tablet use. I mean, we don't ban phones in the workplace to a certain extent. And I always think that an education system should reflect the state of an employment system. But, you know, there's arguments for both ways.

S1

We should also mention about Apple releasing an update to iTunes.

S2

Yeah, we've forgot to mention this when iPhone 15 and that came out because of course, every time there's a new iPhone update iTunes for when. Does gets updated. We get so focused on the Mac that we forget about iTunes. And that brought up this update. Now, I must admit I'm a bit confused because it said the update is to allow people to play podcasts and audiobooks inside the iTunes application. Now, I thought you could only do that with I, so I'm not quite sure. But in the notes that I've got and in the link to the article, it says it allows people to play podcasts and audiobooks. 

So I've got my trusty little Windows Surface Pro next to me, so I'm going to have a bit more investigation because to me that sounds like something that's already been available. So I just want to see what the slight difference is in what they're currently talking about. But anyway, if you want a new iTunes update in September for windows, go for it.

05:54

S1

Now, we might have heard about this in the media last week, but you could expand on under the little. And that's about Microsoft and the government and the cyber spies battle. What's going on there?

S2

This is actually a really intriguing story. I was listening to an interview on ABC radio last week, and what they were saying is that governments by themselves can no longer fight cybercrime because it's so big, it's so entrenched now. It's worldwide. It's not country based. Governments themselves don't have the skill based, hence why industry has to be involved in fighting cyber crime, detecting it, stopping it all, that sort of stuff. So what's happening as far as Microsoft is concerned, they're doing a $5 billion investment into stopping cyber crime in Australia. 

But what they're also doing up to 2030 is they're not only going to be doing and helping with cyber crime detection, they're also going to be doing things like creating about 300,000 jobs, not just in cyber detection, criminal type stuff, but also at the end of the article that I was reading was the fact that TAFE will be offering actual certificates to do with computer science via Microsoft. So it looks like Microsoft is taking a huge hand in not only cyber crime type stuff, but computer. And remember, also artificial intelligence.

S1

Is Google still the best search?

S2

This was an interesting article I think was is Google search better than being or DuckDuckGo, which is the private search one? And what it ended up saying was really if you're doing general searches, then all of them are pretty much the same. If you're doing very specific searches for very specific items in the article, the person used the example of searching for a particular item for a toy that doesn't exist anymore, and Google gave the correct information. Whereas being an DuckDuckGo sort of said you might want to try some of these web pages, but from Google it gave a lot more information, not just web results. 

So it looks like Google is still the main search engine of choice. And remember, this other reason why I put it in there too, is because Google is in trouble at the moment, because everybody thinks Google is got too much of a head start on the internet, and they really should let other people, you know, have more input into internet rather than just Google taking it over all the time.

S1

Being a person who follows games stuff a lot. Tell us about Marvel's Spider-Man and accessibility.

S2

You remember a couple of weeks ago we talked about the Forza Horizon motor racing game? Well, this is not as amazing as that one. And what I mean by that is the accessibility options in Spider-Man two is I guess it's more general. It's more to do with physical motor control and people with low vision. But I did ask my son, who bought his new Spider-Man two last week, and I said, did he actually happen to notice the accessibility options? And he actually went through them with me, and it sounds quite good. 

So things like when the characters jump, you can control the fact that if they're going to fall, they don't really fall. And depending on how fast they move, you can control the speed of movement and all that sort of stuff. So you can make it a bit easier to actually use it with the game controller. But again, it's an example of many game developers really focusing on making their games accessible to a wider audience.

S1

In the windows screen reader world. Always a major event around the end of October, when the next version of jaws drops. Jaws 2024 came last week.

S2

And I always say this if you want the the best screen reader on the market. For me, it's always jaws for windows. They keep making enhancements to the screen whether. Things. Absolutely amazing. It's like, surely by now they've run out of run out of features. The main features that sort of yelled at it to me was the fact that the face detection. To make sure that your face is in the video, focus for when you're on a video call, like a zoom webinar and so on is accurate. And also the split view for brows. So you can have one focus in a window and a focus in another window with your brow display. 

And of course, there are lots of really, really interesting updates for Microsoft Teams and of course the Office Suite, Microsoft Word, Excel, outlook and PowerPoint. So if you're thinking is it worthwhile updating, particularly in the workplace and education, I always say to people, it's much better to keep it up to date and certainly get the latest update of jaws for windows.

10:58

S1

It's worth having a little bit of a play in jaws every now and again. There's lots of gems buried away in there. Recently, the message center was introduced Message Center. You can reach that by going to help if you've got your focus on Jaws. And then message center is one of the things in there. And that's where jaws leaves announcements about updates and all sorts of other things. 

And it was from there I found out about the Immersive Reader, which is a great little tool, and it's well worth having a look at if you want to explore that one. And lots of other stuff buried away, as I say in there. And the message center is a good way to find out what's going on with jaws.

11:39

S2

That's a great idea. The other thing to remember with Whisperer or Freedom Scientific is the fact that they've got lots of training material online as well. So it's one of the good things about jaws is that you can go into the website and find all this training material on basic stuff, advanced stuff, internet stuff, Microsoft Word stuff and so on. So if you're a beginner user or even intermediate to advanced user, absolutely take advantage of all the training material and also use the cast, which is their podcast, which gives you the latest updates of what's happening in the Jaws zoom text or Fusion worlds, which is the combination of Jaws and Zoom text.

S1

Now this next item is not quite tech, but we do talk about tech stuff a lot in the orientation and mobility world getting around, as it were. You've got yourself a new cane the other day.

S2

This is a bit of an interesting thing. It's called the all terrain cane. So what it sort of basically means is that you can use it on the beach, in the bush, in the city, all that sort of stuff. So basically what it is, it folds into three pieces. It's got a rollerball tip. So it just basically rotates around. You can just slide it over all services. The three segments are actually made of titanium. And then where it connects to each other, they're actually still connection points rather than having an elastic inside. It's actually a steel cable. The whole size of the cane can go from 130 or so centimeters, up to 160cm. 

So it ends up being quite a big cane, and the handle is probably about the double size of a normal handle you'd have on your normal, your golf club style cane. Because what this cane is going to allow you to do is not only use it as a cane, but almost like a walking staff. So if you're trying to get more balance walking up a hill or it's a bit unsteady walking down the hill, you can put your hand up and down that handle. Plus the fact that you can also adjust it. I'm going to take it Bush bashing and on the beach over the next week or two, and I'll let you know how it goes.

S1

Very interesting. Before we go, a reminder of where everyone can find details of what we've been talking about in this and previous editions of the program.

S2

As always, you can check out my blog site, which is David would be a dot podbean pad com.

S1

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

S2

You can write to me at Business Trial Royal Book, which is David Dot Woodbridge at Vision Australia-dot-org.

14:08

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. Stay safe. We'll talk more tech next week. See you.