This seasons apple Lee Evans - iansyst AccessAbility 2010

1. This Season’s Apple
An Information update on the Apple platform…
i3 / i5 / i7 – new generation of more
powerful processors
This is a big leap in graphics performance.
All Apple Macs now come with the i3/i5/i7
processor generation.
These new processors allow the system to
now run significantly better than the Core 2
technology.
The higher end i5 & i7 processors consume
less power than their predecessors & take
advantage of Turbo Boost to clock up the
processing speed capability.
The New Mac Mini
Sleek, aluminium enclosure, 2 x faster graphics
over the previous generation. Consumes under
10W of power at idle. 35 percent reduction in
retail packaging and 68 percent less plastic.
For those new to Mac, who are looking for the
most affordable way to get a Mac, & have an
existing display, keyboard, & mouse they can
use…the new mac mini gives a balance of value
& performance…
The Magic Track Pad
Want the enhanced productivity of Multi-Touch gestures with
a desktop Mac?
The first Multi-Touch track pad designed to work with your
Mac desktop computer. It uses the same Multi-Touch
technology as the MacBook Pro. And it supports a full set of
gestures, giving you a whole new way to control and interact
with what’s on your screen. Swiping through pages online
feels just like flipping through pages in a book or magazine.
Inertial scrolling makes scrolling feel natural. Magic Trackpad connects to your Mac with Bluetooth
wireless technology. Use it in place of a mouse or in conjunction with one on any Mac computer—
even a notebook.
Just like the trackpad on the MacBook Pro— only 80 percent larger
Made of smooth, touch-friendly, and wear resistant glass
Supports the full set of Multi-Touch gestures
Use instead of a mouse—entire surface is a button that clicks
Features the same sculpted aluminium design as the Apple Wireless Keyboard
Designed to sit next to the Apple Wireless Keyboard—it’s the same height and angle
Keeps your workspace neat—no annoying cables
Manages power intelligently for long battery life
Lee Evans, Assistive Technology Specialist
& Regional Account Manager, iansyst ltd September 2010

2. iLife
iLife ’09, Apple’s suite of digital lifestyle applications, includes
iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, and iDVD. It provides Mac
users with easy, innovative ways to create, enjoy, and share their
photos, movies, and music. Organize and search your photos by
faces and places in iPhoto. Make a great-looking movie in minutes
and edit with precision in iMovie.
Learn to play piano and guitar, or compose and record your own
songs with the new guitar amps and stompboxes in GarageBand. It
comes free with every new Mac.
iWork
iWork ’09, Apple's office productivity suite, is the easiest way to create
great-looking documents, spreadsheets and presentations. With major
upgrades to Keynote, Pages and Numbers, iWork ’09 brings powerful
new features that allow you to achieve sophisticated results while
maintaining Apple's revolutionary ease of use. In addition, iWork ’09 makes
it easier than ever to exchange documents with anyone. You can open
Microsoft Office documents in iWork, save iWork files in Office formats, and
email documents in your choice of iWork, Office, or PDF formats.
iPod Touch – next generation
iPod touch has a beautiful new design that’s even thinner than before.
Packed inside are some of Apple’s most advanced technologies—the
Retina display, two cameras, a built-in mic, a gyroscope and the powerful
Apple A4 chip. Use the front camera for FaceTime video calls over Wi-Fi to
any other FaceTime-enabled iPod touch or iPhone 4.Capture HD video with
the back camera. Continue to take advantage of more than 250,000 apps
on the App Store—many of which are free
iPad
The iPad comes with Wi-Fi or with Wi-Fi + 3G, each
with 16, 32 or 64GB of storage capacity available.
The iPad allows users to connect with their apps and
content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than
ever before. It is the best way to experience the web,
email, photos, and video, and there are thousands of
apps on the App Store specifically designed for iPad.
It is so thin and light, it's easy to carry and use
anywhere. And with iPad with Wi-Fi + 3G, you can
stay connected wherever you go.
Lee Evans, Assistive Technology Specialist
& Regional Account Manager, iansyst ltd September 2010

3. Spotlight
Spotlight is the lightning-fast search technology built into Mac OS X
that makes it easy to find what you’re looking for.
With Spotlight, you can find anything on your computer as quickly as
you type: files, email, contacts, images, calendar events and
applications. And because it’s built into the core of Mac OS X, search
results update instantly whenever files change.
MobileMe
MobileMe keeps your email, contacts and calendars in sync across your iPhone, iPad, Mac and
PC — automatically. It makes it easy to share photos and files. And if you ever lose your iPhone
or iPad, MobileMe can even help you find it.
MobileMe is the service from Apple that stores your important information online at me.com and
keeps it in sync and accessible on your devices. New email, contacts and calendar items are
automatically pushed over the air to your devices, so you always have the latest information at your
fingertips.
Voice Over - Control your Mac with touch and sound.
New in Snow Leopard is the ability to control VoiceOver with gestures on your Mac
notebook’s Multi-Touch trackpad. The trackpad surface can actually represent the active
window on your computer. So you can touch to hear the item under your finger, drag to hear
items continuously as you move your finger, and flick with one finger to move to the next or
previous item. For example, you can drag your finger around the trackpad to learn how items
are arranged in a web page, a spreadsheet, a presentation or any document with text.
For further info on accessibility features of the Mac, visit
http://www.apple.com/uk/macosx/accessibility/
Dual-Boot & Parallels / Fusion
A dual boot system has the hard drive partitioned so that on one side sits the mac operating system,
and on the other windows. You switch the computer off & on to switch between them, holding the ALT
key down to choose which system to use as you hear the chime. The quickest & simplest way to
access your files between the two systems is to use a USB stick. Windows is more powerful in this
mode.
Parallels / Fusion are two packages that you can open on your Mac the same as you can with the
internet (Safari) or itunes. They then allow you to use windows software within them. As you are
running Windows software on top of a windows emulator, on top of the mac operating system, it is not
advisable to run resource hungry packages in this way. I.e. design software, music software, software
where there is a lot of processing going on.
Lee Evans, Assistive Technology Specialist
& Regional Account Manager, iansyst ltd September 2010

4. Dictation
MacSpeech Dictate – what’s the latest...
Powered by the same architecture as Dragon. Now acquired by
Nuance, MacSpeech has been quietly improving…
Did you know…MacSpeech now ‘Caches in’
During 2010, MacSpeech has been making improvements to
their software. By taking advantage of a Caching feature, users
can correct their work manually, by mouse & keyboard. So
there’s no need to remember multiple commands if you don’t
want to. From my own tests I’ve found this feature works best in
its own notepad, which can then be saved and opened as Word documents later. It’s not perfect*
but it’s a stepping stone towards the cross over ability of using dictation & occasionally the mouse
& keyboard that users of Dragon Naturally Speaking have in windows.
What is this Cache Feature? A Cache is a transparent storage area (that is hidden from the user -
from the French "cacher", to conceal). MacSpeech regularly uses this storage area, it will scan and
discover any changes made manually & make a copy of the text to this Cache. Then when you wish
to make any amendments, it uses this information to make sure it edits or adds the information in the
right place. By doing this MacSpeech eliminates the earlier issues of overtyping, and adding content
in the wrong place.
An additional bonus of this feature is that MacSpeech Dictate works great even with text
documents, it didn’t create. It can understand a document’s contents, so that you can then
navigate, and edit that document and add further content by dictating.
* As a back-up Users can always use the Purge Cache command if MacSpeech does get out of
synch….
Did you know…you can also create your own commands in MacSpeech. For example you can
create commands for printing signatures, addresses, anything you have to type regularly…
(Accessed via the Tools menu > Commands)
MacSpeech Scribe
The sister application to MacSpeech Dictate. The transcription tool for Mac.
Take a digital recording & convert it to text. It works independently to MacSpeech
Dictate. Some Keyboard work is required to use.
Lee Evans, Assistive Technology Specialist
& Regional Account Manager, iansyst ltd September 2010

5. Mapping
Inspiration 9
Free form maps, key features
same as PC version
MindView 3
Organised, more structured
maps. Set date criteria to
tasks, view time lines,
Different look and feel to
the PC version.
Mind Manager 8
Organised, more structured
maps. Set date criteria to
tasks. Different look and
feel to the PC version.
Lee Evans, Assistive Technology Specialist
& Regional Account Manager, iansyst ltd September 2010

6. Text To Speech & Vocabulary support
Read & Write 4 gold
New - Screenshot Reader. Will read any locked PDF document or inaccessible text. The text can be
read in the document or copied into MS Word.
New - Screen Masking. Visual impairments commonly associated with dyslexia can be aided by
coloured acetates or tinting. Screen masking, the ability to block out any text not being read, is also
available as a valuable concentration aid.
Enhanced: Talking Dictionary; Study Skills Tools; Scanning; Text To Speech.
Other features: Phonetic Spell Checker; Homophone support; Word Prediction; Safari Web
highlighting; Daisy Reader; PDF aloud (PDF reader); Fact Mapper; Speech Maker; Translator; OCR
scanning..
Software available 3 ways: On USB; on Disk; on Network.
Claro Read v4
New - High Quality Voices
New - Visual Highlighting
New - Research and Capture Information, using ClaroCapture. Collect text from any document and
web page, grouping it as a project file. Then send to Microsoft Word or PowerPoint.
New - Scanning Paper and Converting PDF files. includes Readiris Pro 11 OCR software.
New - ScreenRuler for Mac. An on-screen ruler that tracks the mouse pointer to help focus
New - Word Prediction
New - Extras Button. includes other software applications bundled with ClaroRead including
ClaroView, ScreenRuler and ClaroCapture. There is also a link to the Mac’s calculator
Improved - Word Check Window. The Check Window now integrates homophones, spelling
suggestions and meanings in one window.
Other features include:
Text to Speech
Font & Spacing helps to arrange and colour the user's Word document.
Homophones, Spellings and Meanings functions ensure users have used the correct words.
Word Prediction.
PDF convertor enables users to scan documents into accessible formats to be read back.
Claro Standard, & Plus available on Disk & USB version (Standard only)
Lee Evans, Assistive Technology Specialist
& Regional Account Manager, iansyst ltd September 2010

7. Visual Thesaurus
The Visual Thesaurus is an interactive dictionary and thesaurus which creates word maps that
blossom with meanings and branch to related words. Its innovative display encourages exploration
and learning. Helping you to understand language in a powerful new way.
Organisation tools
Notebook (Circus Ponies)
Take control of your notes; Track your tasks; Manage your
clippings; Organise your life…
Entourage
Microsoft Entourage is an e-mail client and personal information manager
developed by Microsoft for Mac
Entourage provides email, a calendar, address book, task list, note list, and project manager.
The Project Center, allows the user to create and organize projects, adding tasks, relevant emails,
Calender events, and contacts. Users can also share this information with others if this is a group
project.
Entourage 2008 also features a new "My Day" utility, which assists in
organising one's day, by giving you prompts and reminders in a little display
window on the desktop.
MobileMe
The easy way to keep your iPhone, iPad, Mac and PC in sync.
Lee Evans, Assistive Technology Specialist
& Regional Account Manager, iansyst ltd September 2010

8. Note Taking Solutions
Olympus DM450/550
Tactile buttons and voice guidance. Different recording options using the built-in
microphone for different environments. Set bookmarks at key points of your
recordings. Five storage folders plus a music folder for audio & Podcast files. extend
the built-in memory with a Micro SD card. Includes rechargeable batteries (charge
inside device) and their own audio management software, called Sonority, which is
Windows & Mac compatible.
DM550 has a 4GB memory, 3 recording formats (WMA, MP3, PCM/WAV), 68 hours recording time in
the ‘best record quality’ mode (XHQ), manual record level control, partial file erase (PCM mode), file
divide (PCM mode) and comes in black.
DM450 has a 2GB memory, 2 recording formats (WMA and MP3), 33 hours recording time in the ‘best
record quality’ mode (XHQ) and comes in silver.
Olympus DM5, Make Digital Recordings, and much more:
Increased Memory (8GB), Record in a much higher quality record mode, for longer (over
100 hours in ‘best record quality’ mode. Greater capacity to store other kinds of data.
Enhanced PCM recording mode ( non compressed WAV files). Also mp3 and wma. New
Voice Navigation of menus. Hold a button down, say the menu name, away it goes.
Enhanced voice guidance. Visual Index Marks displayed on the device. Rechargeable,
Lithium Ion battery. Charge from the PC via USB cable, or an AC adapter. Download Audio
Books onto the DM5, now including Daisy format. Also upload text files for Text To Speech
playback. Add Pictures onto the DM5, to use as reminder prompts, revision support. A new
Schedule / Calendar section. Add Music & Podcasts to the DM5, i.e. important talks, and
audio versions of documents. A larger coloured screen. All the control / navigation buttons
on the front of the device. This should make it more intuitive to pick up and use.
Audio Notetaker v2 (PC compatible)
With consideration of Dual Boot & Parallels, use Audio Notetaker
to collate, structure, annotate, & reference materials all within
one application. Audio Notetaker provides a visual representation
of your digital recording, enabling you to navigate and edit your
recording, while adding text & images.
Livescribe – Pulse & Echo Pens.
At work, in class, or on the go, there’s an easier way to stay on
top of all the information you need.
Pulse records everything you hear, say and write, and links your
audio recordings to your notes.
Find the most important information from your meetings or
lectures just by tapping on what you wrote.
Store your notes on your Mac or PC.
Create custom folders (New Feature).
Share with others (PDFs, Audio files, Pencasts), or convert your
handwriting into documents or emails (Using MyScript for
Livescribe).
Lee Evans, Assistive Technology Specialist
& Regional Account Manager, iansyst ltd September 2010