So a friend of mine who had sold his mac already a while ago (spoiler: because of Ventura instability and accessibility problems) has recently decided to buy a new one, macbook air m2 base model which has 16gb unified memory, which isn't a bad deal at all. So I was telling him the changes since sonoma (which he was already a bit familiar with) and sequoia. We had this conversation 3-4 days after he receiving it. The first thing he told me is that it's so much stable and actually usable now, voiceover is actually a useful tool now. So we spent maybe two hours on facetime? And we are both lazy so didn't want to install rim. I had already tried this before but not as actively as I did then, but the screen share and control works almost 90% well. The controlled mac should just be using ctrl option as modifier. Trackpad doesn't work remotely. And most importantly, both keyboard layout must be the same otherwise you'll be up for very very weird results (trust me) like ctrl option space acting as vo l on the controlled machine..... We did everything, from vo utility to real time collaboration in pages. Everything is actually so usable! With a brand new mac, easily in less than an hour, we're literally ready to tackle any serious work like pro level document editing, some light development, while being completely offline after initial setup, which we can also probably do offline with mdm probably I have not explored this seriously yet. It's incredible! No need to install 3rd party softwares, and the ones the original macos install ship with, including iwork suite, are genuinely useful unlike the load of bloatwares on windows... I'm so impressed.
Comments
Tell us how it is in a few…
Tell us how it is in a few weeks when the wow and new wear off.
That's great
Sequioa makes VoiceOver actually almost good to use. I do think a combination of knowing how to use a screen reader now (comparedto using a mac as my first screen reader experience) and how stable Sequioa is has really improved my experiences with VoiceOver. I still would feel reluctant to switch because of the bugs and inefficiencies that tend to crop up. Like Devon said, give it a few weeks.
Yeah he's already aware of…
Yeah he's already aware of all tis. He had about one year of experience with the mac, and in the worst way possible, around 2023. He's the one who convinced me to buy a mac in the first place :) I'm at least happier now! But I'm confident everything or most things will be fine knowing (our same) workflows.
But what I really wanted to…
But what I really wanted to highlight is how well the ecosystem and integration is even from an accessibility point of view.
that's awesome! question
That's awesome! question: I heard about Rim before, but never used it. so, did you test it on both machines running the same operating system and did you use the voice conversation feature? How is it compared to other voice communication platforms such as Facetime and Zoom?
this is awesome news
This is awesome.
Integration
Yes, integration is one of the things I love about Mac. I miss being able to text on iMessage on my Mac, but there was a little bit of lag when I used iMessage on my mac a few weeks ago.
As stated I didn't use rim,…
As stated I didn't use rim, just everything apple, we were on a facetime call and he shared his screen and then allowed me to control it. Everything native right from the mac.
PS: I know that for whatever reason apple thinks that it's a good idea to not ship regular macos installations with the full iwork suite but they do ship it with freeform... Aside the complicated route of ipsw files and possibly idevicesupport? Is there any way to truely get a like new installation with all the defaults that we have on a real brand new unmodified mac?
@Chamomile
Sequoia prevented me to sell my mac. This tells a lot.
iWork
So iWork does not come preinstalled on Mac?
I think it does, or I…
I think it does, or I remember it was pre-installed when I bought mine
It's there on brand new…
It's there on brand new machines but not when doing a reinstall afterwards.
@BlindGuy07
Can you elaborate more on why Sequioa prevented you from selling your Mac?
Also, interesting iWork isn't installed - is there any way to install it from the App Store?
Installing iwork in appstore
Yes, there is. Go to the App Store, search for the program names, and download them from there.
Used to be
Used to be that you could do a search on the Mac App Store for the , "iWork", and, "iLife", suites and you would get search results only for those particular apps. Not sure if this is still the case or not though. 🤷🏽♂️
Wow didn't know that, tried…
Wow didn't know that, tried and it still works.
@Chamomile
The tldr, I am planning on doing a loong post just about that since october, but, wel... It hasn't finished cooking yet.
I work suite much improved general accessibility, snr and related less frequent and web browsing seeming more stable, commander improvements, and subtle but positive quality of life change in the backend of VO and accessibility infrastructure making the overall experience on macos (terminal aside, read my corresponding post) way better, stable and up for real productivity, insane (still rough on the edges but...) improvements with pdf in preview, apple remaking the calculator app that's actually almost 100% good with vo alone now, a huge mathml interaction bug when in other than standard grouping behaviour solved, **iphone mirroring is pretty much a non feature for us aside the notification but when I really want instagram DMs are readable on the mac because of it although it's a terrible experience overall**, and generally apple seeming to want to listen our feedbacks just slightly more than before... The lists is almost over, but it's basically because of those little things that I did not sell my mac although I was very, very close to do just that. As stated on another thread, ventura and sonoma were just terrible for voiceover users in every way possible.
Monterey
Where my old MacBook Pro will forever be. It can, technically, go up to Ventura, but as has been stated by others, Ventura is garbage.
Also, and call me old-fashioned, but I hate the new system settings layout. I'll take the old system preferences any day. 😛
System Prefs vs new Settings
I never really had a problem with either, and found I adjusted pretty quickly to the change. Haven't even thought about it in a long time.
Still very happy with my m1 macbook air. Would love to get my hands on the new m4 chip model, but that won't be happening any time soon. Maybe when someone is getting their hands on an m8 or something crazy like that, m4 mb air prices will be down enough I can pull it off, but other than the increased speed, I'm not really missing anything, and imagine m1 should still be supported for another few years.
Voiceover on the mac is still pretty good as far as I'm concerned. It can be a bit buggy, but for the most part, I find it works well.