I bought a Mac mini about a year and a half ago. Personally, I am
disappointed. Just to be clear, I am absolutly not saying the Mac is junk.
Its just that its not the miracle I had expected based on what I'd heard.
First of all, I believe it takes significantly more keystrokes to get
anything done with voiceover than it does with Windows & jaws. I think even
the combination of Windows & nvda has voiceover beat. But I argued with
experts on a voiceover email list and some of the real, hard core experts
insisted that I was wrong. I tried to do a keystroke count comparison for
various common ttasks but it didn't work out. I think the Mac advocates were
being unfair and thought I was a Mac basher. I'm not a Mac basher, of
course. I spent $600 on the Mac mini and I'd have been thrilled if it was as
good or better than Windows & jaws. I'll admit I might be wrong but I just
don't think voiceover is as efficient as jaws.
Secondly, I was disappointed with Macos over all. I expected everything to
be so easy when compared to Windows because I'd heard for so many years
about how friendly the Mac is. Honestly, I don't think a Mac is *that* much
friendlier than a Windows PC. Probably my best example is that there is no
way in Macos to redirect your line-in to your speakers. So if you plug an
analog audio source into your line-in, you can't listen to it. You have to
download and install an app. And that's another example -- you're going to
have to learn how to install things on a Mac. You don't just double click on
the download and its done. It seems to me that I ran across many little
things like that. No one thing is a big deal. But maybe its just that I had
unrealistic expectations based on hype. Still, trying to be as fair as
possible, I just don't think MacOs is all that much easier to use than
Windows.
So if you're a Windows user, I wouldn't recommend switching to a Mac just
because it comes with a built in screen reader. If you don't want to pay for
a screen reader, I'd recommend nvda. On the other hand, if you're a systems
admin, it can't hurt to learn about Macos. IPhones come with voiceover so
you'd open up a whole new group of devices to yourself by becoming familiar
with macos and voiceover. I fully intend to get an IPhone someday soon. But
first I need to convince my wife that I'm not going to lose it.
But a year and a halfafter buying a Mac mini, I am still using Windows and
jaws every day. I even took the Mac mini with me when I went to get a new
guide dog because I knew I'd *have* to use the Mac every day for 3 weeks.
But I still just never got to the point where I thought it was as nice as
Windows and jaws. So my opinion is that there are certain benefits to owning
a Mac but I wouldn't switch to a Mac for the sake of efficiency.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Granados"
So I'm do for a laptop refresh at work and they have decided to give me the option of a new I7 Mac. Is Voice Over ready for the job site? How does it work with things like ssh, rt tracker via http, and what about this windows under parallels thing? I keep hearing about VM fusion. Anyone who could give me a primer I'd really appreciate it. What's the ideal configuration I should shoot for?
Thank you Scott
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