Re: Uncle! Yosemite it is, then.
NVDA is great when you control all the software like in a VM, but it falls over very rapidly when you start using anything that's not native or nearly-native. No, I think the difference between VoiceOver and NVDA is the entire ecosystem; all the developers writing Mac software are cocoa, and the only time it breaks is when it isn't. So I stand by my personal opinion that the Mac not only gets the right philosophy, but also lives by it rather more successfully--increasingly so, as the platform gains recognition. This is not in any way to discourage people from using or donating to NVDA, but the discussion would go a lot quicker if people just said "Oh BTW, I have JAWS installed on this box" because not all of the software I use is made by MS, written in WinForms, or whatever. Things will get better, but right now it looks like I'm going back to Windows purely for functionality.
QT accessibility has always been pretty awful, but I think Apple and Nokia stopped caring at some point, which is why I boot a XP VM to use the odd app (TeamTalk, e.g.). I think it goes deeper than merely what screen readers are doing; the roles are frequently not even correct, so NVDA is correcting them when it happens to be aware. Supernova will, for instance, correct a button to a checkbox just by using its shape. This really isn't important, it's just an example of what is possible if you rinse your hands of a philosophy of doing accessibility correctly, which I think is essential to Windows.
I think object nav and Narrator do as good a job as can be found on Windows, but no, I still don't agree that flat is OK. You may very well hear everything you _need_ to, but you won't (IMO) know everything that you _should_. Philosophy, again. And the same applies to the speed argument; we really have no objective information, it's just your perception. Apple chose, voluntarily, to educate people for what I perceive to be a good re ason of the logical layout of UIs, but you clearly see it as just an impairment; I find the loss of methodology to be a great disappointment, and what is more any effort to gain it is seemingly not rewarded, because the screen readers, the APIs, and the people who use them just aren't interested. Yes, there are plenty of shortcuts in OS X, really there are. They may not be in the menus by default, but they are all listed ind assignable, for example you can jump to most controls using a dedicated shortcut (Cmd+f for Find, e.g.). The real reason why you like Windows keyboard accessibility, and it's why I do as well, is that it wasn't an afterthought, and thus the primary way to do things from the keyboard is typically much more intuitive, but honestly, about the only thing I really, really miss is Cmd+R for run. You don't need the VO keys all the time either--go ahead, use the tab key, use cursor navigation, press Control-F2 to reach the menu bar, whatever; it' ;s all good. Why people continue to skimp this is a mystery to me. I suppose that I'll just have to downgrade my expectations of screen review.
Draconis is on the App Store; I'm not sure what process they used, but it absolutely requires Xcode for the final step of signing and submitting, if not for testing on an actual device. You can't do it without Xcode, even if not for the actual coding and build process. I am aware that this is not uncommon, but I also happen to know that blind people are actually using the IDE for their coding as well. There's a list for such people, but I don't have the addy at the mo.
I can read Python; that's good enough for me, at least for now. I write system software so there is very little room in any of the upper-level stuff, though I'll probably have to learn it eventually, for some reason. I've written, and like, Ruby, though, and find that much more enjoyable; Python is just intellectual.
Ye s, NVDA 2015.0, of course. I think this copy of Firefox is sluggish anyway, so to be fair it may not actually be NVDA's fault in this case, so I'll need a control test. Yes, 2.6 quad-core I7 with 16GB of RAM. No idea.
No, really, the various WAMP stacks for Windows really are horrible and I just can't go there. Homebrew or a VM will give me a self-contained playground, a choice of _any_ software stack I want, and a much better chance of actually implementing the required setup. OS X simply wins; it's Unix, there's no way around that. On Windows you really only have the VM option. Certain software can be run on Windows if there is a port, but even then I would not advise it, because the support is often suboptimal; for example, you will typically not have a mail transfer agent available, so you'll find that your test code needs modification just to work in your testbed to send email. I'd better get my VMWare Workstation license and work on a minimal ssh-able Linux box.
TTS choices are _always_ subjective. You won't believe it's true, until you run into somebody who disagrees with you. But apparently you need a bit more work. I'd agree that Eloquence has a limited lifespan, but the whole time I've been using NVDA, it has, in fact, been with eSpeak--same for Window-Eyes, in fact; I'm using it right now. Without question, eSpeak is getting better, but it's no Eloquence or even DECTalk yet.
Are you quite sure you've tried coding in braille? It's just ... I couldn't go back to speech. Being quiet is one thing, but the denseness of code, the number of punctuation marks, means the speed advantage of speech is essentially nullified. Only if you are writing or reading much text does it come in again. For this to work you will need a direct, one-to-one correspondenc e between characters and cells, and you will also need good controls on your braille display to navigate both by panning and by line. This is one instance where I think virtualisation is _entirely_ justified, just to get BRLTTY; it really is that good.
I've used Windows for many years, full-time prior to moving to Mac in 2009 or so. I still use it as part of my work, of course, and continue evaluating it, as any good tech enthusiast should. And I think you were here when I started talking about moving back full-time. While I appreciate your concern, and I'd agree that we're both determined to ignore the opinions of the other, I do believe I'm actually giving it a go. It may already have been a couple of months; can't remember. Fact is, I miss OS X a lot. Maybe you can't see that, and in which case perhaps it was never the right platform for you, but IMO a lot of Apple hate is just that, hate. If we were reasonable, there'd be no question that people should use whatever suits them best, and for me that's OS X, and for you appears to be Windows. Now that I'm trying to move back to Windows, I'm faced with all the reasons I first had for leaving the bloody thing, and realising that, honestly, a lot of the Windows superiority that is evangelised is mostly just perceived. Whether because of some hatred of Apple, or because Windows users just have an entirely different set of priorities, I have no idea. I was rather hoping that there would be an objective reason to use Windows beyond "I can run more than you, and faster" but sadly there doesn't. So, it looks like that's the one I'm going with once I've figured out how to like Windows, unless of course Apple gets its act together. Or, hey, maybe I'll just keep running them in parallel.
And this brings me back to the point I've been trying to maintain: it's really not all that much about accessibility, it's t he whole damned operating system. You could ask any Linux user, if you need confirmation. Mac isn't great because it talks--that's just a side-effect, and one that is always misunderstood, ironically, as somehow being its selling or strongest point. It's great because it isn't bloody Windows.
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