Meta Connect

00:36

S1 (Speaker 1)

Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from October the 3rd, 2023. I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have you with us. Listening maybe through Virgin Australia radio associated Stations of Australia or perhaps the Community Radio Network, there is also the podcast. If you haven't caught up with that yet, all you need to do is search for the two words talking tech and Dan It can all 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 Advisor on Access Technology, David Woodbridge. David, let's start with the big news in the disability world. Last week that the report of the Royal Commission into Violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disabilities, that report was released and it's available and it's quite easy to access, isn't it?

S2

Mark It is indeed. And the fact that it's in various formats, which I think is absolutely fantastic, mind you, because it is a report about people with disability, you'd want to make sure it was accessible. But I think we're coming to the stage, Stephen, where I don't think stuff being inaccessible format these days is a strange thing. I think most of the things coming out, these are accessible.

S1

Certainly government stuff is. Exactly.

S2

That's right. So I think it's nice that these days we can get the same amount of access to content than everybody else does. So I'm definitely looking forward to reading it. I think as you said before, we went on here today to read the executive summary, which is also quite large because it's 12 volumes. I can remember somebody in the media saying it's for people that remember the huge telephone books of yesteryear. It's about the size or thickness of an old fashioned telephone book. So if you want a very good read, start for the executive summary and see how you go. But again, the fact that it's accessible is fantastic.

S1

Yep. That's where you'll see the overview of the report with the recommendations in that volume.

S3

Exactly.

S1

Be my eyes, the AI aspect of it, artificial intelligence, the virtual assistant that's now gone into the public beta stage.

S2

That's right. And when we say public beta stage, what they're doing is rather than making the whole thing public beta at once, which you can imagine would probably put a huge amount of strain on their service, they're sort of releasing it at about 10% of the user base. I think it's once a week, they said. So it'll take several weeks for everybody to get the quote, public beta so you won't have to subscribe to anything. It'll just come up and be live and, or like I did when I subscribed to the private beta, you'll probably get an email saying when you go into the app it'll be live. 

But it's basically the feature where you take a photo of something and then you can find out in great detail what the photo or the image is that you've just taken with the camera and explore it. And for those that haven't experienced it, it's absolutely amazing. I've taken photos of my backyard. I've taking photos of parks, I've taken photos of my son's school, and just the amount of detail that came out with the AI interpreting the photo was amazing. So enjoy that. Keep checking in maybe once a week and sooner than later. You'll definitely get access to it. But it's no longer in private, it's in public beta. 

But like I said, they're rolling out over the next couple of weeks.

S1

If you're a little bit nervous about taking photos, it will help you with that process. But also I actually have in my device my phone lots of photos that have been taken over the years. Also, there are lots of photos in Facebook that one can access. It's very easy to share those and have been my I tell you about them. So it's not just photos that you've taken yourself, but it's others that you have access to. It's terrific.

S2

True. That's a good point. And I remember individualism too, over the weekend where a lady said she'd had a photo taken of some artwork that was done on her by her brother a while ago, and she was able to actually have a look at the photo, so to speak, and it was able to describe it in full detail. So you're right. It's not just, you know, your own photos that you're taking at the time. It's all the past one. So enjoy, I think.

05:23

S1

Yeah, very true. The new iPhones are out. Have you had access to an iPhone pro yet, The 15 million?

S2

No, I haven't. But apparently one of the existing issues. Is with the the phone is that for some apps it's obviously what they call clocking the CPU or the processor too fast. And of course once you start doing that with software using the the chips to fast, you generate heat. 

And of course, some people have been actually saying that some of their iPhone 15 and 15 pros, I'm assuming as well, have been overheating. And Apple says it's not due to the fact that they're using titanium. It's due to the fact that the software or the apps that are running are taking advantage of, I guess, the extra speed in the processor. So there'll be another bugfix coming out from Apple to fix that issue. 

So I'm assuming it's ever going to be changes with the the library routines, the apps you accessing or something else. But yeah, don't be worried. Your hardware is not overheating. It's the software that's making it overheating.

S1

Yeah. Watch out for those little updates to iOS 17. They'll be coming thick and fast for the next little while. Probably you're having an irritation that you're not getting the warning about. Low battery.

S2

No. And look, I don't know. This is I think it's been happening for a while that I've just I've just been ignored and getting grumpy. So what it is remember in the old days, I can't remember how long this was ago now, but I used to get a warning when my battery was at 20% and at 10%, you know, go and plug in your power. Well, I'm sure I'm right in thinking over the last maybe. Jeez, I want to say six months. I haven't been receiving that warning. 

Now, when you're like me and you're in bed at night time having a bit of a sleep or going to sleep, I listen to an audiobook and the only reason why now, when my battery goes flat, is because my book stops and then of course wakes me up. So there was apparently a fix that that recommended, I think it was on Apple vs where you could go into your verbosity settings for voiceover and change your system notifications to speak. So I did that and it hasn't made any difference at all. 

So I've been writing to find out if other people have been getting that 20% or 10% battery warning and if they have, that's fantastic. Let me know. And if they haven't, I wonder if there's actually a workaround because I'm one of these very naughty people that I tend to use. Use my iPhone until it practically dies and then I plug in my power.

S1

Now, what about the Apple Watch and the new operating system, the Apple watchOS ten?

S2

This one actually surprised me a little bit. I get the feeling saying that we're spending about this show so far talking about things that Apple hasn't done properly. And this is sort of another one that Apple hasn't done really properly either. And that's the fact that remember when the the watchOS ten was announced in Series nine and the ultra two watch were announced, they were talking about the double tap or double pinch. And that's where you put your index finger and thumb together and you tap them twice or pinch them twice. And that's to do things like play music or answer and hang up a phone call. 

Now, I thought when it was announced it was ready to go, but it wasn't. So it's only at the moment in the current public beta of 10.1 for the Apple Watch that it's actually available. Now. Remember, this is only available on the Series nine and Ultra two, but it just reminds me of again today that it's almost sounds like in a way, software wise, Apple wasn't ready to go with the software. So I don't know what's happening in Apple land, but they seem to be losing the plot slightly lately.

S1

The weather complication on the watch.

S2

Yep, that's another one that hasn't been happening. So for some people, apparently when you go into the weather complication on your watch face rather than having like conditions and rainfall and that sort of stuff, it has dash dash, which means there's no content there. And apparently the fix from Apple was to go in and change your location to turn it on and turn it back off again on the watch or your iPhone. 

And the other recommendation, which was put forward by Macrumors was to change your clock from 12 to 24 hour time and back again. That was also supposed to fix it. Other people are still saying it's wrong, so keep having a look at to see if you are having troubles with your watch. Complication. Have a look at the link in the show notes. Try the things I just suggested. But at the moment they're sort of more this is what we think is causing the problem. 

So see what happens. But the weather app itself is working fine. It's just the weather complication.

10:10

S1

Meta, the Meta Connect event.

S2

So they had this big announcement last week about the the new glasses, the new smart glasses from Meta, which is Facebook, if you like. The other announcement, which we may need to keep a bit of an eye on the next 12 months or so or sooner is the Ray-Ban smart glasses, which looks fairly interesting because you can you can stream audio to your Facebook page and other services that people can see what you're looking at. 

So the question is, well, could you use this like a video system where somebody could help you if you needed help? So I don't know how accessible this is or anything else about at the moment, but I think it's one of these things as of all the stuff coming out of Ara, AR and VR that we just need to keep track of over the next 6 to 12 months.

S1

How's ChatGPT going?

S2

ChatGPT is feeling a lot better because apparently there were some issues with it. They I remember the story was that it would only access a database up to 2021. Well, then it started accessing the internet and then they took it off again and now they've put it back on again. So now when you access ChatGPT, particularly via Bing, then you'll have direct access to the internet so you can ask real time questions rather than sort of historical ones. Before 2021.

S1

Let's go back to Apple. Can't stay away for too long. The Mac operating system Sonoma has now been released.

S2

Yep. It's got an update for people with older Macs. And when I say older, max mean before the M1. So the Intel series you may not get all the features come with the main features that I've noticed on my Mac and I've got an M1 is I now have widgets that I can put on my desktop that come from my iPhone i.e. the battery widget. I can run websites as if they were applications, which is really, really cool. 

And the third one which is more of a under-the-hood thing. But Apple has said that the pdf file reading with voiceover has been improved. Lots of other under-the-hood things, but do the three main ones that stand out for me?

S1

Pixel phones. Any news?

S2

As usual, there's an event after we finish going to air this week and that's the Google event. And of course there'll be the pixel eight being announced and the Pixel Pro and the pixel two. Watch again that people are saying it's under the hood. Hardware changes, not so much software changes. So I'm showing people like double tap and those sort of people will get their hands on a pixel eight and a pixel two. Watch. And I'll let you know what Steven Scott says and about either the phone and or the watch.

S1

We haven't talked much about Apple TV for a while.

S2

No, look. Since I was 17, came out and we now have FaceTime on a 4K Apple TV. I went and bought a new Apple TV to test out FaceTime, which worked really nicely. However, when I went into the settings to remove a few apps off my desktop, the whole screen when I was just, you know, flicking down and moving the other down, I just said remove button, remove button, remove button. It didn't say the name of the app, it only said them when I was going back the other way. 

So I've reported that bug to Apple as a voiceover bug and there were a few little other things that I noticed with voiceover on the Apple TV interface. So again, there are a few bugs that I think some stage Apple needs to sit back and do a bit of quality control, at least with voiceover, not so much on the Mac, but definitely on the watch, the iPhone and the Apple TV, because to me these are just more sort of lazy coding bugs that have crept in. 

So if you do have a new Apple TV 4K, if you do notice any further bugs, please let me know and I'd love to report them for Apple for you.

S1

So on the midterm report card for Apple shows promise but can do better.

S2

That's exactly correct.

S1

Just before we go, a reminder of where people can find details of what we're 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 by incom.

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 and Vision Australia. Org.

14:37

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.