0:46

Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking

0:48

Tech. This edition available from June

0:51

the 18th, 2024.

0:53

I'm Stephen Jolly. Great to have you with us

0:55

listening maybe through Vision Australia radio

0:58

associated stations of RPA Australia

1:00

or perhaps the Community Radio Network.

1:02

There is also the podcast. To

1:05

catch that, all you need to do is search

1:07

for the two words talking tech.

1:09

And it can all come usually on a Tuesday

1:11

afternoon just after it's been produced. Another

1:15

option is to ask your Siri device or smart

1:17

speaker to play Vision Australia

1:19

Radio talking tech podcast

1:21

Vision Australia Radio talking tech

1:23

podcast with me, someone who

1:25

can explain all this tech stuff really well.

1:28

Vision Australia's national advisor

1:30

on access technology, David

1:32

Woodbridge. David,

1:34

let's start with the product

1:37

from the vision store of

1:39

Vision Australia. What have you

1:41

got for us today?

1:42

I have the Orcam read

1:45

three. That's Orcam

1:47

Orcam read three. And

1:49

this is a little handheld

1:52

device. And if people that

1:54

know about the orcam in general are the ones that normally

1:56

go on your glasses, basically

1:58

you point the little camera at handwriting

2:01

or any text,

2:03

what it might be on a piece of paper or even on a computer

2:06

screen, and it will read it

2:08

back to you. So it sort of does very similar

2:10

things. It also reads handwriting, which

2:12

is for me, very cool, but

2:15

the really exciting stuff to do with the the

2:17

read three, they'll can read three is the fact

2:19

that it actually comes with a stand.

2:21

So it literally turns your

2:23

little portable handheld

2:25

reading device into

2:28

a standalone reading machine,

2:30

which we used to call them back in the old dark days.

2:33

And the third really cool thing,

2:35

and this is the one that I like about it, is that if

2:37

you link it up to your

2:39

windows computer or your

2:42

iPad via a web browser,

2:44

you can run some. So

2:46

I'm going to use the word artificial intelligence

2:49

to do things like summarize

2:51

the page you're looking at, or perhaps

2:53

ask it how much an item costs,

2:55

or to search for particular things.

2:57

It does quite a few different types

2:59

of things, and you can also

3:01

use it as a video magnifier as

3:03

well. So not only does the camera do the

3:06

optical recognition and the eye stuff,

3:08

you can also use it as a video magnifier.

3:10

So you're really getting around

3:12

about three machines in one.

3:15

So it's one of those great improvements

3:17

that I've been thinking about for 2024,

3:20

where sort of AI meets

3:22

assistive or mainstream technology for

3:24

us, blind and low vision folks.

3:26

It is quite amazing how small it

3:28

is.

3:29

I would say it's about the size of those

3:31

very sort of thick marker pens.

3:33

So it when I say tiny,

3:35

it's very tiny and literally

3:37

you potentially where you can hold it like a

3:40

pen. Um, and it's

3:42

just one of those things that you can just, you know,

3:45

have in your pocket, pull out when

3:47

you need to. Um, it's also got

3:49

LED lights, I might say, too. So if you

3:51

want to have a quick read of something

3:54

in your pantry which is normally fairly dark,

3:56

um, you can do that as well. But yes, the

3:58

size of it, um, is like

4:00

a marker pen. Or if you ever had an orcam

4:03

myeye, which is the one that mainly

4:05

connects to glasses, but at the same

4:07

size as that as well.

4:08

It's available through the vision store

4:10

of Vision Australia. It's a

4:13

quantum reading learning vision product, isn't

4:15

it?

4:15

It is. So if you want more information or

4:17

you want to demonstration, you can either contact

4:19

the Vision store locations around Australia

4:22

or you can also contact quantum,

4:24

which has also got different places around Australia

4:26

as well and have a bit of a hands on play

4:28

with it. It's about $4,000,

4:30

but in this case, I think

4:32

the technology in it and what it's going to do

4:34

now and into the future is pretty

4:36

amazing.

4:37

That's the Orcam read three

4:40

from the vision store of

4:42

Vision Australia. We'll spend time

4:44

now just whetting the appetite

4:46

about what we can expect from the new

4:48

Apple operating systems when they come out

4:51

in September. You've been playing

4:53

with the beta version.

4:55

Yes, I'm doing Mac OS, iOS,

4:57

iPadOS and the watch one as

4:59

well.

4:59

Okay. What have you got across the whole

5:02

Apple ecosystem to tell us about?

5:04

One of the major things is, and I know this

5:06

sounds a bit boring a bit, but your Apple

5:08

ID account now, anything associated

5:10

with it is now called your Apple account,

5:12

which makes more sense. Apple ID was

5:15

getting a bit weird because it was

5:17

associated with so many other things. It didn't

5:19

make sense, and probably the overall

5:21

other one is the fact that we've

5:23

now got, well, they call it music recognition.

5:26

Back in the old days, we used to call it Shazam,

5:28

and that's your way that you can

5:30

get your phone, Siri, to listen to music

5:32

and tell you what the song is.

5:34

Anything with passwords.

5:36

Passwords is normally built

5:38

into your system preferences,

5:40

uh, particularly on the Mac. Well, now there's

5:42

a separate passwords app

5:44

on both iOS. And

5:46

Mac OS, and I must say, just

5:49

be able to run an application,

5:51

then you can just search for your passwords

5:53

is a lot easier than having to keep going into

5:55

system preferences and try

5:57

and find it in there. So I really think that's

5:59

actually a huge improvement.

6:01

Let's look at each device

6:03

now, the Apple Mac

6:05

and the new operating system

6:08

10.15 A new tips

6:10

app.

6:11

People might not remember, or maybe

6:13

you've just got bored of it, but iOS has a tips

6:15

app. So does iPad OS. Well, now you've got it on the Mac

6:17

as well, and it's just a little application

6:19

that will pop up. Or you can go and

6:21

have a look at it, and it will give you tips and tricks

6:23

on how to use your system better, in this

6:25

case, how to use Mac OS better. So it's

6:27

just one of those little things that's quite handy to have.

6:29

And what about all those sounds you can hear?

6:32

To me, this is a huge improvement

6:34

because when you turn on

6:37

hearing on your extras menu

6:39

before, when you turn background sounds

6:41

on like rain and ocean and Brooks,

6:44

that sort of stuff, it just said enable

6:46

sound for each one of them. Well, now it actually has proper

6:48

names of each sound, so if I

6:50

feel like rain or ocean

6:52

or brook, then I can turn the appropriate

6:55

one on. So it's just a little change, but I think

6:57

it's actually quite nice.

6:58

And there's a new voiceover tutorial.

7:01

This is just not a slight

7:03

improvement to the VoiceOver

7:05

practice tutorial. This

7:07

is a wholly rewritten

7:09

tutorial which is highly interactive,

7:12

and it's a lot more extensive than the old one

7:14

used to be, so that

7:17

is actually very worthwhile, even for

7:19

um experienced users. It's worthwhile

7:21

having a play with even in the beta

7:23

or when it comes out in September October.

7:25

What about with shortcuts on the Mac?

7:28

I'm going to cheat slightly and say this is also

7:30

available on iOS, so you can

7:32

assign any voice command to

7:34

an action as long as it's supported

7:36

by the operating system. Of course, it's more extensive

7:39

on iOS and on the Mac. For example,

7:41

I can say turn on background sounds

7:43

now to my Mac. And because

7:45

that's a command shortcut, it will turn

7:48

my background sounds on or off

7:50

rather than me having to go and do it manually. So

7:52

they're the little things that you can assign voice commands

7:54

to.

7:55

Let's talk more about iOS

7:57

now and some

7:59

interesting things in iOS 18. Firstly,

8:02

you can power it off a slightly different

8:04

way.

8:04

We had a chat about this before he went on air. I

8:07

don't do it your way, Stephan. I do it a weird way.

8:09

Yes, the power button where you

8:11

can, you know, power off your device that's

8:13

now available in the control center. So if you're one of these

8:15

control center people that use the control center

8:17

all the time, right down the bottom of the screen,

8:19

or you can always change them around is the power off button

8:22

now. So if you've done it the long

8:24

way, which I do, um, then

8:26

that's actually a huge improvement for productivity.

8:29

Here's one that I'm looking forward to in

8:31

settings. And it's about

8:33

the settings for a specific app.

8:36

So you know your current version of

8:38

iOS, you can imagine your settings folder having

8:40

all these applications. I've got about

8:43

450 of mine, but what they've done

8:45

now is they've put all those apps in a

8:47

folder called apps. They're

8:49

alphabetized and you've got your vertical

8:52

scroll down the right hand side where

8:54

you can flick through A, B, C, D and

8:56

so on. So it's a much more efficient way to find

8:58

an app when you want to adjust its settings.

9:01

Um, just a little thing when you're turning

9:03

VoiceOver on, um, there's

9:06

a haptic indication as well.

9:08

It does. It vibrates now and then. That's particularly

9:10

good for deaf blind people if you're using

9:12

a Braille display, because before

9:14

it would just say voiceover on and the braille display

9:16

didn't work, you didn't know that voiceover was on. So adding

9:19

vibration to it is a really nice

9:21

little feature.

9:22

Tell us now about the rotor and what we

9:24

called the language rotor.

9:26

Let's now change to voices, because

9:28

you can do a lot more things to do with

9:30

your primary and different voices

9:32

now. So I think they're trying to make it

9:34

to say that it's much more than

9:37

just languages. It does everything

9:39

else for you.

9:40

Yeah. So there's lots of little

9:42

accessibility changes, isn't there? Particularly

9:44

with iOS.

9:46

They're more sort of tweaks under

9:48

the hood type stuff. So they're not

9:50

you know, they're not horrendously

9:52

amazing. But I think as you

9:54

know, as in iOS improves, they're

9:56

always just little changes that do make

9:58

our lives a little bit better.

10:00

Live detection is an example

10:02

of a change that will make it easier to get

10:04

to it.

10:04

That's right, because normally when you want to use things

10:06

like door detection, people detection,

10:09

scene detection, etc., you had to bring

10:11

up magnifier. Well, now if you

10:13

turn it on in your rotor, um,

10:15

you can turn on all

10:17

those ones that just mentioned scene door

10:20

people, etc. clearing

10:22

text OCR. And then you've also

10:24

got a four finger, I'm going

10:26

to say double tap. You can turn that function

10:28

on or off which makes

10:30

it very very handy indeed. So

10:32

I love the fact that live detection

10:34

has now come to the voiceover rotor.

10:36

Um, tell us about

10:39

the big one for Braille users.

10:41

Can I say I've been dying to talk about this

10:44

one? All show. So this. One

10:46

is the Braille screen input, or as people

10:48

in the know like to say, the BSI. Uh,

10:50

so normally when you turn Braille screen input

10:52

mode on, you use your the

10:55

soft keys on your screen to

10:57

braille in to an edit

10:59

fill, which is all well and good. But

11:01

now if you switch over

11:04

to what they call command mode,

11:06

it turns those keys

11:09

into your navigation

11:11

keys for the whole operating system.

11:13

So it's as if you were using

11:15

your, say your brilliant

11:17

by 20 or 40 keyboard.

11:20

So you know, normally when you do like space

11:23

one to go left and space for to go right,

11:25

well that's exactly what you can do with the command

11:27

mode. If you put it in command mode, it knows when

11:29

you press one, it's like pressing space

11:31

and one, um, if you want to go home,

11:34

you just press H rather than doing

11:36

space H and so on.

11:38

And whenever you like to, you can very quickly

11:40

switch between Braille input

11:43

mode and command mode. And

11:45

the other thing you can do is the way you can turn

11:47

on the BSI now is much easier.

11:49

You simply touch one finger

11:51

on each side of the screen. Um,

11:54

so like you're doing a letter C

11:56

in Braille. So dots one and four and that

11:58

will toggle it on or off. So

12:00

they've even made the way you can turn BSI

12:02

on and off far easier as well.

12:05

I haven't extensively used it so far,

12:07

but I've used it enough to think

12:09

this is just amazing. And I

12:11

have a funny feeling this is probably going to turn into

12:14

one of my ways of navigating on.

12:16

Of course, the iPhone or the iPad

12:18

is the braille on screen mode. So so two

12:20

modes keyboard input or Braille

12:23

keyboard input and the command

12:25

mode. And it's just like I've already

12:27

said several times. Incredible.

12:29

Looking forward to that. Um, let's

12:31

talk about the watch now. A couple of little

12:33

changes.

12:34

There's a few things to get excited about if you're an exercise

12:36

person, but the one that I've definitely used is

12:39

the vitals app. It's like a sort

12:41

of a cut down version of the health app to give you

12:43

your main biometrics

12:45

like heart and exercise and calorie

12:47

burn and everything else. So that's pretty cool.

12:49

You can pause your rings. So me,

12:51

like a fanatic karate person who always trains

12:53

every day. If I want to be slack and

12:55

take half a day off, um,

12:57

I can turn off my rings for the rest of the day.

13:00

But interestingly, what they've

13:02

actually got rid of, which is probably a little bit sad,

13:04

is they've got rid of the Siri face. So if you used

13:07

to use the Siri face on your Apple

13:09

Watch, um, they've got rid of it. And I have

13:11

a funny feeling they've got rid of it because hardly anybody used

13:13

it. It was always talking. It was annoying.

13:16

So I just think they went well.

13:18

We tried. That didn't work. We'll take it away.

13:20

I just hope Mickey Mouse is still

13:22

there for my granddaughter.

13:23

Mickey Mouse is still there. And I think

13:25

there's one called Snoopy. But I think Snoopy might have been

13:27

there already.

13:28

You haven't discovered anything about

13:30

Apple I yet. There

13:33

is something for people to know

13:35

though, and that is that that's

13:37

not happening in the watch world.

13:39

No, it's not happening in the watch world and it's not

13:41

happening in the HomePod world either.

13:44

And remember that they're not even

13:46

really going to touch upon this stuff until

13:49

probably middle of spring

13:51

our time. Um, and then it's going to be

13:53

a gradual implementation. I did see on a

13:55

day where they did say that Siri will probably get

13:58

more of a conversational mode, but

14:00

it certainly won't be any other Apple

14:02

intelligence stuff going on. So

14:04

that's something to look forward to. I wouldn't be surprised.

14:06

Maybe next year, Steve, we get an updated HomePod

14:09

and an updated Apple Watch that

14:11

can definitely do, uh, the

14:13

AI stuff from Apple. Um.

14:15

Thank you, David, for giving us your initial

14:17

impressions of the betas

14:20

for the new Apple operating systems.

14:23

Before we go, a reminder of where there

14:25

are details of what we've been talking about.

14:27

Indeed, as always, you can check out my blog site,

14:29

which is David Woodburn Dot Podbean

14:32

pod Cbn.com.

14:33

David would be r dot

14:35

podbean podbean

14:38

for.com to write to the program.

14:40

You can write to me at Vision Australia, where I work, which

14:42

is David Dot Woodbridge how it sounds

14:44

at Vision Australia.

14:45

Org David Dot Woodbridge at

14:48

Vision Australia. Org

14:50

this has been talking tech with me has been

14:52

Vision Australia's national advisor on

14:54

access technology David Woodbridge I'm

14:56

Stephen Jolly stay safe. We'll talk more tech

14:58

next week. See you.