Hey everybody,
First I would like to say that I'm so glad that we can now discuss pre-release and beta’s on here.
I'm really curious to know if anyone has played around with the developer beta of Mac OS Ventura.
If so, I would like to know your thoughts on what features are present and what features we could be seeing for VO and just the General user experience.
By harry6116, 10 July, 2022
Forum
Apple Beta Releases
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Comments
My thoughts
I've been testing macOS Ventura and so far have come away with the following impressions. Please note that all of this is based purely on my own experiences and that as it is beta software the following information may change between now and the public release. Also, this list is not a comprehensive document of new features, changes, and bugs; AppleVis will have more detailed coverage at the time of the software's public release.
Thanks so much for your thoughts.
Thanks so much for a brilliant and comprehensive list. It sounds like it has the potential to be a very very good operating system.
Safari not responding
hey,
I'm not testing at the moment but on the latest CD builds of Safari for the current operating system, for not responding message was far less pervasive.
I had to get off the current public beta cycle because of a nasty bug where VoiceOver would not remember the preference to control Apple scripts.
Apple Books
Hi everyone.
Did anyone try to use Apple Books app in Mac OS Ventura? I sent reports about the bugs with that app to apple a few months ago and they said that they were looking at it. Any improvements or fixes?
Note: I'm not using beta program.
Hello, I just installed the…
Hello,
I just installed the beta less than an hour ago. Eloquence on the Mac is working very well. On the iPhone I found it to still be a bit buggy, as at 60% it was very very fast, but at 50% it was very slow. They need to work on fine tuning the rate on iOS, but on Mac OS I am very very impressed.
Other than that, things are stable so far. Already did some audio editing which worked well, and while I never had as many problems with Safari not responding as most people, I haven't noticed any issues here either, so it's at least as good as before, maybe even better. I'm using the m1 MacBook Air. Can't say anything for other devices.
uh, I don't get the, speak date command
I have the command for the date set, but when I do my set key combination to get the date, I get something like, 22tir1401. I don't get this format of date, is there something I'm missing as far as the calendar and having the date in a different format? I'm really confused about this dates format.
As far as the beta, i've noticed what I think its bug, but not sure. If anyone could give it a test, that'd be great.
I'm using elequence as my default voice. However when I log out and I get to the login window, elequence doesn't speak as the default voiceover voice as it is when i'm logged in. Instead one of the default voices such as samantha comes on at the login window, but not elequence, and as far as I can tell, you don't have elequence as a option in the login window if you go into voice, and arrow down through the lists of voices. Can anyone else reproduce this, or has anyone encountered this behavior?
Other than that miner issue, macos ventura has been pretty stable from what i've gotten to work with it.
Speaking the date
Hasn't the keyboard commander always had a way to speak time? (Unless I added it ages ago). For me right opt + T does it. It is running an Apple Script, so I guess the new way is more integrated. One thing I have noticed is that before I'm sure there was a pause, then it was read out by a different voice, but now it uses my VoiceOver voice and it's quick. This is on Monterey.
I'm looking forward to Ventura though. Does it fix any focus issues with the VoiceOver cursor?
Authentication is still not…
Authentication is still not responding and Safari is still not responding and Voiceover still doesn't work properly on the login screen.
I keep telling myself this is still a beta, but I'm getting a little nervous. Here's hoping they read our bug reports and do something about them. That said, system settings is the update to system preferences that I had no idea I absolutely, desperately needed. It's so, so, so, so much better than system preferences. There are some issues with system dialogues though. Not too bad.
Not Good!
I was hoping we'd get more bug fixes, I really was. Maybe I'm getting my hopes up again? There's still time in the beta cycle, but I'm worried. I've heard from other people that Apple Books and the terminal are still garbage when it comes to VoiceOver access. I really really really really really want to like this, but it might not be as polished as I was hoping for. This is why I refuse to purchase new hardware until they've made significant strides forward in terms of stability and adding more useful features. How does the text checker feature work? I heard VoiceOver can now indicate indentations which is good, but what else can it do? Have they finished their half-baked PDF support from 2017? As far as I know it's still not possible to reliably navigate by elements like links, headings, edit fields, lists, or tables in properly tagged documents.
My thoughts so far
I also have the beta as well, and I agree, Eloquence is very responsive on MacOS.
Yeah, the rate issue I have also noticed as well. Hope apple fixes it soon.
Indentation
Hang on.... Ventura can indicate indentation? Has anyone tried this and can shed some light on how it works?
removing voices
Hi all,
is there a way to remove voices in Ventura that you don't need?
My speech rotor is full of novelty voices that I will never use, along with all these Eloquence variants, Fredd, Siri voices, and such.
In the previous versions, you could just uncheck any voices you didn't need, but now this screen only shows you which voices you are using, and gives you the option to download one if it isn't already.
Am I missing something?
Thanks.
Indentation
I'm also interested in knowing the status of the indentation reading. This is the reason why I can't switch to Mac. It is very uncomfortable to coding without having an indentation reading. Thanks!
Indentation
In VoiceOver Utility > Verbosity > Text, there is a new “Leading tab and space indentation” popup menu. As text indentation is not a big part of my use case, I cannot comment on the current quality or utility of this feature.
some bugs that I encountered
Hi.
1. I don't have speech in login window.
2. tdsr apppears to be broken.
speaking of the login window...
I have elequence as my default voice, however on the login window, I don't get elequence as the voice, instead I get samantha, and elequence isn't available when going into the voice, menu, via command shift vo. I already reported this via the feedback app, along with a screen recording of the bug, but has anyone else noticed this?
Indentation
Thanks Tyler! Does that indentation pop-up menu have more options? Such as using tones or just voice?
If you open text edit and type on the first line "hello", and on the second line four spaces and then the word "bye", and then move through the two lines with the arrows, do you notice any changes? Voiceover says something?
Thanks! This is exciting and opens up a lot of possibilities for me