Do you believe that iOS and macOS improve with each release?

By Maldalain, 20 September, 2016

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Can you please support or go against what I have here?
I am not really comfortable with the assumption that Apple’s various operating systems are improving with each release of new update. Personally, I do find IOS 8 and 9 more stable than 10, Yosemite more stable than El Capitan and probably Sierra. Let’s think of accessibility, that’s not because other things are really wonderful, but just to give few things that I am quite sure of.
Why to have that prolonged App Store bug on MacOS with El Capitan while it was not there on Yosemite? Why are we still unable to effectively interact with tables in MacOS? Is Apple that reckless to procrastinate the (feat) to support reading PDF’s? What about admitting multilingual support on MacOS? Isn’t it taking to long while it has resided on IOS several years ago? Braille is still buggy and unreliable on MacOS, especially with other languages. Isn’t there anyway Apple can think of to help VoiceOver users go around the capcha thing? What about the overall performance of VoiceOver under Sierra, I do find it slower than what has been on El Capitan, VoiceOver on the native Mail app keeps announcing the agonising “Busy” message each time I arrow right and or through emails list. We’re still way behind sighted peers in terms of using office suites; Has anyone been able to effectively and independently to design a full slide show using Keynote or submitting work flowcharts with Numbers?
Now to IOS. Multilingual support was better on IOS 7, 8 and early releases of 9. Those using two languages on their phones know what I mean. Samantha’s voice was much better on IOS 8 and 9. Personally I have real difficulty understanding the logic behind implementing Braille on IOS as there seems to be no clear which braille is used on Safari and on the OS interface itself. My iPad 4 Retina should be running faster with each IOS release, at least as Apple claims, that’s not true, and believe me if there’s one way I can downgrade to IOS 8 I wouldn’t wait. Battery life is an issue with each release. Isn’t time yet for adopting full support for external devices like keyboards and adaptive tools? Personally, I have tested many bluetooth keyboards with IOS and each one had really unique bug that’s different from the others.
I have been reading on rumours websites that Apple’s main concern about its products is to improve the existing features rather than coming up with new ones. yes there’re innovations but they’re so little. That’s true for normal users, but in terms of accessibility I am not seeing real implementation of either innovative features or improvement of existing accessibility features, except some minor superficial enhancements.
Please leave your comments on this, I am saving money for a new laptop and your feedback may decide whether I will keep my insanity and revisit the Apple Store or may head to Amazon and grab one of those flashy Lenovos.

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Comments

By Fatima.Hamoud10 on Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - 20:44

Try reporting these issues by sending an email to Apple Accessibility.

Well, I think Apple Accessibility may have just to look at the subject line of an email to recognise that's me who's nagging about a bug or feature to be included in IOS or MacOS. The issue is not about Apple being less lenient in accepting suggestions or working on resolving problems, the issue is the sluggishness of initiatives on Apple's part. VoiceOver on Apple Watch is wonderful thing and yes it's such an innovation, still think of the list of the things that I and many people around here have emailed Apple about.
I am an academic and do feel bad when thinking of going back to Windows, nevertheless my colleagues and friends may not find it really nice to ask them to come over and check comments on a Pages document simply because Safari does not support this. Wouldn't be really happy myself if a customer comes with a document including tables and I say sorry I can not work on proofreading or editing this because my VoiceOver does not effectively support tables on Pages.

By Ekaj on Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - 20:44

Here's my take on this whole thing. Before going any further though, I want to say again that I only started on OS X Mavericks. I have had very few issues with VoiceOver, and it seems like the ones I have had were fixed in each subsequent release since Mavericks. I did in fact report some of these to the accessibility team at Apple, because for me they were show-stoppers. For example, the issue where the default low-battery notification wasn't being spoken bothered me. But Apple has since fixed that and hopefully it remains this way in OS Sierra. I've heard from some people that the issue I've been experiencing with speech crashes might have something to do with my system memory. I for one am looking forward to being able to remove unwanted stuff on here; therefore, freeing up memory. Another thing which I'm really looking forward to is Siri, since I've never used it. But I think Apple is doing a terrific job and bugs are being squashed. Keep in mind that they are a big company, and accessibility isn't their only concern. I'm not saying they don't care about it, in fact quite the contrary.

By Toonhead on Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - 20:44

This is the blessing and the curse of asking questions like that on a site like this, because one person is going to have a terrible time and say they really need to fix this, and other folks, like me who own a windows machine but have iDevices like an iPhone 7 and an iPad minnie aren't having any real honest-to-god issues. Everyone uses their computers and iDevices differently, in the tech world some people call this a use case. So like, for example i might use my iPhone in one way, and someone else on here may use it very differently. For myself, multi-lingual support isn't an issue because I only speak English. I also don't use any other apps like numbers, pages, Garage band or anything else like that, and the apps I do use are all working just fine for me. Also, I keep having to remind everyone of this because it's really easy to forget...we are a minority, and if we have issues, sometimes it's going to take a little longer to make our voices heard with Apple. But just the fact that they added more voices to voiceOver in iOS 10 and the easyw way of moving apps around clearly shows that they are listening to our concerns. It may not be everyone's concerns but they are listening, and that's a good thing.

By Darren12 on Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - 20:44

The Mac is obviously great at some things, I love the idea of making the jump for the sake of curiosity and learning something new personally. However, in academic or professional environments, it doesn't seem to objectively compete with Windows and a good Windows screen reader. Robust PDF support really is a must if this perception is to be changed, and really it is that simple in my view. In my situation, I'm about to move companies and start a new job, a Mac just wouldn't be at all viable.

By Maldalain on Wednesday, September 21, 2016 - 20:44

Unfortunately with latest Sierra and Pages v6 I see no improvement for those working in academia. I opened various documents after the update and the difficulty of getting data in a table and handling comments in a documents are two boring tasks. With all the halo surrounded MacOS I expected a real leap toward exceptional accessibility enhancements but that was a real disappointment though. Ugh, forgot about the Dictionary app, too simple and not ideal for professionals working in multilingual fields.

I'm confused. how does talk about Pages the change to the dictionary app? If you don't like the default dictionary app, find another one. As for Pages, can't say I've had any real trouble with Tables myself, though undoubtedly my documents are different than yours. Without source material to test there's no real way to troubleshoot, and saying things such as "it doesn't work" or "it's not getting better" really aren't helpful either on this site or when giving feedback to Apple. What, precisely, doesn't work? How would you expect said feature to work? Info like this is absolutely necessary.

Wel, if you read what I have above you would easily notice that I explained the whole thing. And if you read once more, you would find that I did not only talk about Pages. About the default Dictionary app, please tel me if there is any other dictionary I can download for wahtever price that's compatible with VO. Everyone knows about hyperlinks in dictionaries for both MacOS and IOS and that shock that has been recently when AHD became inaccessible after it was the only *as far as I know) dictionary application that's accessible. Is it useful now?