Archive for October, 2007

With the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Lioncourt.com is starting a new series of short tips to help Voiceover users improve their Mac experience. Not all the tips will be specific to VoiceOver, and most tips will be applicable to both Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. [...]

The Screenless Switchers podcast has a round table discussion on Leopard, focussing on VoiceOver and how the new OS is working for blind and visually impaired Mac users. Joining Darcy and Holly this time are Josh de Lioncourt and Anne Robertson.
You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or the official web site, or [...]

Today, Assistiveware announced a new podcast series focusing on access technologies for Mac OS X, giving a fresh perspective from users with a range of disabilities. Dubbed "Users in Control", the new podcast has three episodes already available. You can subscribe via iTunes, or find out more from Assistiveware’s Podcasts page.

Lioncourt.com’s John D. Panarese of Technologies for the Visually Impaired (TVI) has contributed our newest featured article. In Memoirs of a Blind Switcher, John reflects on the challenges and satisfactions of making the leap from Windows to Mac OS X. It’s a must-read for any new or potential blind Mac switcher.

Today, Apple announced its plans to release a Software Development Kit (SDK) for the iPhone and iPod Touch in February. Such an SDK will give the power to software developers to create native applications to run on Apple’s mobile platform, which is based on its Mac OS X operating system. Potentially, this may [...]

Apple has decided to drop the price of DRM free (iTunes+) tracks in its iTunes store from $1.29 to $.99 as it faces competition from Amazon.com’s new DRM-free music download service. Even better, the tracks will remain at the higher 256KBPS bit rate, substantially better than the 128KBPS of the iTunes protected songs.

This morning, Apple announced that the long awaited Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will at last be released on 26/October/2007 at 6:00 PM, along with Mac OS X Server 10.5 Leopard. The new OS will cost $129.00 for general users. The server version is available for $499.00 for the ten user license or [...]

Today, Assistiveware announced that the prices for their Infovox iVox voices were permanently lowered. Originally introduced as a solution for the low volume accessibility market, it was found that also many educators and consumers wanted to use these naturally sounding voices to listen to documents, create personal podcasts and to help struggling readers. With [...]

Assistiveware released an update to VisioVoice, a companion product to Apple’s built-in VoiceOver screen reader. New features in version 1.1 include:

Live updates to the Text Zoom window
Support for Pages and Keynote in iWork ‘08
Enhancements to the talking interface
Improved reading of text in Safari
Improved importing of PDF documents
Japanese localization and translation
Typing Echo
Other bug fixes and [...]

Well, the last of the Fab Four has had his solo catalog made available through iTunes. George Harrison, the last of the Beatles to arrive, had his music added to Apple’s digital music store yesterday leaving just one unanswered question:
Where are The Beatles?
Only time will tell.