I wish for one, I had an apple store near enough to me so I could get to it, and secondly, I wish our public transport were good and safe enough to be used by any sighted, let alone blind person! Then only might I have a look at an iPad.
Warm regards, Brandt Steenkamp You can tune in to my show wednesday afternoons at 3 PM UTC by going to www.TheGlobalVoice.info Contact me: Skype: brandt.steenkamp007 MSN: brandt...@live.com Google talk/AIM: brandt.steenk...@gmail.com Twitter @brandtsteenkamp ----- Original Message ----- From: Cheree Heppe To: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com Sent: Saturday, March 12, 2011 9:11 AM Subject: O M G, it's beautiful Cheree Heppe here: This afternoon, I took the light rail to the Apple store to get a hands on look at the IPad 2. The line for the IPad 2 was even longer than the last time, when the first IPad was released. One of the mall security guards tried to warn me away with tales of the long line and of people having to take tickets to get in to buy an IPad 2. Undaunted, I asked the security guard to speak with one of the Apple reps. The Apple rep knew me and I got right in. Thank you, oh, thank you! The store had a bunch of IPad 2's arranged around a square table near the front of the store. The Apple store was jam-packed, as usual, but even more so. My little German shepherd dog guide settled herself under the table in front of where I stood and rested quietly while various curious IPad enthusiasts came and went and I examined the IPad 2. This IPad 2 looks and feels smaller, but it is actually the same outer dimensions as its predecessor. Somebody had an IPad 1 with them and we held the two against each other to prove that the IPad 2 was the same outer dimensions. Where the IPad 2 is smaller is in its weight and thickness, which is immediately noticeable, if one has handled the IPad 1. The IPad 2's rounded edges make it seem even thinner without feeling fragile in any way. There was a fellow customer examining the IPad 2 next to me on my right and I asked him to turn on Voice Over. He was doubtful about being able to do this at first, but I talked him through Settings to General, to Accessibility and through engaging VoiceOver and Triple Click Home. Once those preliminaries were done, my newly met sighted assistant felt more confident about playing with the IPad 2 in front of him. I told him that all IPads have VoiceOver on them and that he could use VoiceOver to read books to him. He sounded interested and amazed. In order to hear VoiceOver in the hubbub of the store, I paired my Bluetooth ear bud with the IPad 2 in front of me. Several previous customers had paired various phones with this IPad 2 and when I left, I didn't unpair those, just my own gadget. Using VoiceOver, I looked around and found a lot more features on this IPad 2. Maybe they loaded a few extra non-native apps on it, but I found three pages of apps. After navigating to YouTube and watching the first part of the original Star Trek's Doomsday Machine, I re-entered Settings; General; Bluetooth and un-paired my ear bud, clicked back to the Home screen and tapped Triple Click Home to return that particular IPad 2 to Sighted Standard Mode. This IPad feels a lot faster than the IPhone 4. In fact, it feels like a computer in its responsivity and I really can envision this device morphing into a full fledged computer in very short order. The sighted guy next to me thought the same thing. I left and took a break at the Starbuck's in the mall before heading home. Wow, what a gadget!! Even more amazing to me is my ability to get right on the IPad 2 and navigate and perform functions correctly and independently the first time. My only regret is that blind users still must recruit sighted assistance to initially turn VoiceOver on in the absence of an ITunes interface. If there were a start-up way to have VoiceOver on by default, I would have never had to recruit my fellow IPad adventurer to turn Accessibility on for me. Regards, Cheree Heppe -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
