Good evening, everybody, and welcome to MacBytes for what is today, October 10th, 2023.

My name is Brad Snyder.

I am not only the host of MacBytes, but I'm the BITS presentation chairperson.

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So with those formalities out of the way, I'd like to thank everyone for joining us.

And let me introduce my co-host tonight.

I have with me once again, Sri Roy from Springfield, Virginia.

Hello, Sri.

>> Welcome, Brad.

And we have Mr.

Pete Lane joining us from Jacksonville, Florida.

Hello, Pete.

>> Hello, Brad.

Hi, everybody.

>> Hello, Pete.

>> Welcome.

>> Hello, Sri.

>> Glad you guys are here.

So the subject for tonight will be the new Mac OS Sonoma.

You guys updated to it yet?

>> Yes, I'm not.

>> I am not.

>> Yes, and unfortunately, now I'm looking back at it.

>> Really?

>> Little bit, little bit, little bit.

>> I have not.

>> Well, hearing that, I'm glad.

>> Well, I've updated on my M1 MacBook Pro, and I'm not really having any real issues with it.

There's a few little things.

My issues, which I'll get to later, don't really have anything to do with the OS.

It has to do with just a couple of other software that's doing weird things, and hopefully that'll get straightened out.

What are your issues with it, Sri?

>> So I made the cardinal mistake that I typically don't do.

I try to hold off installing the new OS on both of my machines.

I did it this time, and I wish I didn't.

But my biggest gripe is, ever since I started using the Mac, my modifier key was my caps lock.

>> Yeah.

>> With the update, I had to go from caps lock to control option, which is a completely different behavior for me.

So that got me a little...

In the beginning, I was very confused, because I was like, "Why can't I get out of this thing here?

I'm stuck in a loop here."

I tried to go and do some settings.

They told me that would fix it, and that didn't fix it.

>> Were you trying to get into a text field by any chance?

>> No.

My understanding is, I guess they were trying to do something with the caps lock that was going to impact voiceover users using that as a modifier key.

So what would happen is, I could be just randomly on my Mac, and then I'd do VO right arrow, and it'd say, "Caps lock on."

VO right arrow, "Caps lock on."

VO left arrow, "Caps lock on."

You cannot get out of it.

>> Oh, it keeps saying, "Caps lock on," even though it's not on?

>> No, it's just like it's stuck in that...

From visually, what I'm being told is, there is a caps lock icon, and voiceover is just focused on it and stuck on it.

>> Where is the caps lock icon?

On the screen?

>> Yeah, it's like a blue keyboard, caps on logo that came on now, which they actually had to tell me it was on the screen.

>> Where is it?

>> Somewhere in the top.

Somewhere near the top left, I think, is what they described it.

>> I have to have my wife who's sighted look at my screen, or look at her screen.

She's got a Mac, but she doesn't use voiceover.

She's sighted.

Interesting, because I do not use the caps lock as my VO modifier.

I started using a Mac several years before that was even an option.

So I'm old school.

I'm control option for my VO modifier.

So I'm not having that issue, and I just never use it.

I like having my caps lock key act like a normal caps lock key.

So I know, and that takes a bit of training your brain to switch, I know, because...

>> The issue that I've heard relating to the caps lock modifier was that it prevented you from getting into a text field.

>> It actually prevents me from doing lots of things on the screen.

I could be just moving from left to right, and it would just say caps lock on, and then I'd be stuck.

>> Sounds like a bigger deal breaker than just the text field.

>> Yeah, that's a problem.

>> Yeah.

>> Hopefully they'll fix that.

Because I know it, when I use, for example, I know you get used to using what you're used to.

And when I use Google Docs or Google Sheets, and I'm doing anything where I need to use the commands, I have to turn off regular VO modifier and use the caps lock key as a modifier, because I've got to be doing something with control option for Google commands.

It drives me crazy using the caps lock as my modifier, because I'm not used to it.

And so, and I can't.

I have to use caps lock, I can't use control.

So I understand what it's like when you're used to doing it a certain way, and then you can't.

>> Now I've got two hands, ten fingers going on the left side together, because I'm not used to using two additional fingers being used.

But I would say, you know, for our audience, if you are a caps lock modifier user, I would say you might want to think about holding off if that's critical to you.

>> That's a showstopper for me.

That would be, yeah.

Well, I had updated my MacBook, my MacBook Pro.

I did not do my MacStudio.

I went ahead and did it the day it came out, because I'm teaching a class in Mac, power tips for Mac users, or pro tips, that's what it's called.

And I needed to, I wanted to be on the new operating system when the class began, even though a lot of students aren't necessarily on it.

They haven't updated, or they have a Mac older than what is able to run Sonoma, but as the instructor, I felt I needed to be running it.

And I have left my other one.

Anyway, before we go get too far down this conversation, we do have a recording.

Herbie Allen's not able to be with us tonight.

He has another meeting that he had to be at.

But Herbie prepared a very nice summary of changes for voiceover users in Mac OS Sonoma.

And so why don't we go ahead and play that, and then we'll proceed with our discussion about it.

Well, thank you, Brad and everyone, and a pleasant good evening to you all.

I'm going to start by talking about one of the biggest changes that's most noticeable now with Mac OS Sonoma, if you are a user of the quick nav feature on the Mac.

Previously, it wasn't so much all rolled into one, but you only had to worry about this once, which was the single key navigation.

Now they are two completely separate things.

So whenever you want to do what is called single key or quick key navigation, you will do a VOQ that will turn on that feature that will turn off the feature.

This is not going to work regardless of whether your quick nav is enabled or not.

If you want your traditional quick nav with the arrow keys aspect of the Mac, that is still around, but it is now called arrow key quick nav, and that is separate from your quick keys.

And you can enable this with your left and right arrows as you traditionally would in the past.

One thing you need to know is currently with the quick keys enabled, you do not have any advantages with form fields or anything like that.

It is unclear at this time if this is a bug or not, but you will find that you're going to have to disable your quick key navigation in order to fill out any forms or search fields or anything like that.

The next thing I'm going to talk about may not be available on Intel Macs.

At least at the time of this recording, I am not able to find what is being talked about here, but you are supposed to be able to adjust more voiceover aspects than before.

Like you can on the iPhone with iOS 17.

And you can do things like adjust sentence intonation, you can make adjustments with the head size of eloquence to make it sound a little bit different.

I can definitely help you with this on the iPhone, but the Mac, at least on mine, I am actually not finding the ability to do so at this time.

What you do is you are supposed to be able to go to the voiceover utility, speech, then voices, then go to manage voices, interact with the voice from the list, and then you are to look for an info button.

And you can do the same thing with voices and spoken content as well.

And you can get there by simply going to the accessibility menu and spoken content.

You can also preview the changes that you have made before changing them.

A couple of significant changes for Braille users.

One, you can now get mathematical equations expressed to you in Nemeth code.

And you can find this under the voiceover utility, Braille, and translation.

Also, if you have a two-dimensional Braille display, you can now have information displayed to you in a graphical content.

Last year we got the ability to have voiceover announce indentation levels, and now you can customize just what constitutes an indentation level under the voiceover utility and verbosity.

Siri is supposed to have made improvements with voiceover and how it interacts with it.

I will tell you that with the one I use, which is Siri Voice 4, I honestly have not noticed any difference.

But one significant difference that I have noticed and I don't particularly care for is now it will speak numbers at a slower rate than the voice rate.

And I find that a little bit annoying, actually.

So I don't know if I'd call that an improvement or not, but there you go.

A couple of significant changes for low vision users.

Now you can adjust the text size for individual apps that support the feature.

And this can be found under system settings, accessibility, and display.

Also, if you use multiple displays, you can adjust the zoom level for each display individually.

One final improvement is you can now disable the ability for it to autoplay animated images.

And this could be really useful to some.

A couple of changes for hearing aid users, if you have an M1 Mac, you can pair hearing aids that are MFI compatible.

And also you can use the live speech option that is available on iOS 17 to basically write out a verbal response for others to hear.

Another new feature is predictive text.

And Applevis and I both agree that this is actually rather an annoying feature.

However, it can be disabled.

If you go to keyboard under system settings, then go to edit and disable the inline predictive text, you will have a much more normal and much easier typing experience.

A couple of minor changes is you can now use groups of voiceover settings per app.

And it also no longer distinguishes between that window and web spots.

They are now just one thing.

One of the things that is listed into the change log for Apple is you can now assign function keys like F1 and so forth to your braille display.

Some bug fixes that you definitely will want to be aware of is, first of all, some of the voiceover users that were experiencing issues on the logon screen will no longer have that problem with Mac OS Sonoma.

Another bug that has not been fixed for some people, at least, is the Safari not responding.

I will tell you though, from my own personal experience, that the Mac does respond a little bit quicker and when you get Safari not responding, usually just waiting for a second fixes the issue.

And you can now click on links again in the app store on the Mac.

That has been definitely a bit of an interesting experience there.

Couple of bugs that people have noticed.

One, if you click on a link in Safari, it will not necessarily take you to where you think you're going to be at in the page.

But that, for me at least, has not been a big issue.

It's a bigger one.

I already mentioned the inability to type with your single key quick nav on.

Another big one might be for widgets.

There are issues with labeling of widgets and I honestly do not use them so I really can't comment on this from any personal experience.

Another bug you're probably going to notice if you use Caps Lock as your voiceover modifier is that it is going to get you stuck often in edit fields.

So you can either try using Control Option or use the numpad if you have a full-size keyboard.

There's not much in the way of actual mainstream features that have really been introduced for this macOS release.

You do have an increased presence in FaceTime videos.

You can make Safari sites into web apps.

I have honestly not tried this.

So if any of you have, Brad and Shree and Pete or anybody in the audience, let us know.

More customizable widgets, stunning screensavers, and better wallpaper.

And you can also add iPhone widgets to the Mac as well.

Let's see, is there anything else?

Presenter only keeps you front and center if you're sharing your screen.

I don't know how much of that is going to affect us as voiceover users.

I'm looking right now to see if there is anything else.

Live stickers and messages.

I don't find those usable.

So there's better search filters for people and all that on the iMessages.

Okay.

Swipe to reply in any iMessage.

I don't exactly know how that works from a voiceover perspective.

Better protection for children as macOS now can sense the videos that are containing nudity.

Also adaptive hearing for AirPods for most of the AirPods models.

And that really is it when it comes to macOS Sonoma.

I really can't tell you anything truly exciting about it.

I will say that I've noticed like some system notifications tend to constantly pop up.

Like do I want to allow CleanMyMac to constantly access this or whatever.

I've made some adjustments in privacy and security and we'll see if that makes a difference.

Otherwise you're just going to find that it is a pretty stable release overall.

I think you will notice that your Mac will respond a little bit faster, especially if you have a slower Mac.

And everything is pretty much going to work the same way that you would normally expect.

All right.

Thank you, Herbie.

Nice little roundup.

That was a good summary.

Yeah, pretty good.

He went through it pretty quick, but it's, you know, let's see.

I have a little summary that I wrote up.

I think I sent it to you guys as well.

What he talked about, maybe we'll go down this list and we'll see how we do here.

What time we got?

I want to... 19, 17 after.

I want to leave plenty of time for any raised hands.

So what do you guys think about that?

Well, Pete, you're not using it yet, but Sri, what do you think about the changes to QuickNav?

You know, personally, I'm the old fashioned DO arrow key user.

So I've only recently started using QuickNav.

So I think for me, after not being able to use my Caps Lock, I think I'm more into QuickNav now because I don't have to.

I can use one thing for now.

Well, I used to use QuickNav a lot when I was new to using the Mac.

It was neat.

But as time went by, I stopped.

I do from time to time use it in certain situations.

And one of the things I liked wasn't so much the arrow key QuickNav, it was turning QuickNav on so I could use quick key navigation.

And now, of course, as Herbie explained, that is separate.

You still turn it on with VOQ, but you could have it turned on, but it only worked when QuickNav was turned on.

So it was really easy to use the two left and right arrow keys to turn it on or off.

And that was a one handed, you know, with my right hand on my MacBook Pro keyboard.

When I use my desktop Mac, I have a full size keyboard, but it's still the arrow keys.

But now I'm required to, if I need, if I'm using it and I don't need it, I'm required to use two hands, VO and the letter Q to turn it off in order for me to type anything.

As Herbie mentioned, I believe before it could be turned on.

And if you went into an edit field on a website or something, particularly if it was a secure edit field, QuickNav was disabled and so was quick key and you could type.

I have to see how that works now, but I know it doesn't matter.

Like you said, if you go in an edit field on a website or anything, you have got to turn VOQ off in order to type.

And I don't like it.

I wish... - I think he thought that might be a bug that we can hope that that would be fixed.

That's a pretty good deterrent right there. - When I first heard about this, I thought there was going to be an option to go into the VO utility, go to commanders, select the QuickNav tab, and you could check a box to decide if you wanted quick key to be always on or only when you had QuickNav on, you know, quick key.

And it is not.

It is, they're separate animals now.

I don't like it.

I just have to get used to it.

I'm constantly finding myself trying to type something that uses keyboard input.

Then maybe I've opened a pull down menu and I want to type the first two letters of the item I want.

And then I realized, why isn't it working?

You know, is this something else that's changed?

Can we not use, you know, a first letter navigation?

No, it's because I've got quick key on.

I turned it off.

Everything goes back to normal.

So maybe you'll get used to it right now.

I'm not pleased with it. - Well, I'm using a numpad commander, which I've been using for years.

And I don't use a whole list of shortcuts like Brian demonstrated when Brian Fishler did his demonstration of the numpad commander in this forum, I think.

He uses like 50 different shortcuts. - Yeah, he's a big numpad commander guy. - I'm basically using the default numpad commanders and they are really cool.

And I don't think I would go to that quick key navigation anyway, because I can get to headings and, you know, links and whatnot without it, just with a numpad commander. - Yeah, that's something Herbie mentioned.

But of course, I'm on my MacBook Pro.

I do have a full-size keyboard I can use, but usually due to space limitations, I'm just using the keyboard on the MacBook Pro and there's no numpad.

So anyway, it's just something I got to get used to.

I don't know.

Let's see.

I'm an old-fashioned guy.

I'm doing it the long way. - Yeah, exactly.

He mentioned unique verbosity settings for individual voices.

Now that's interesting.

He said he's not finding that on his Intel Mac.

I found it on my Mac.

I looked in and played with it.

What this is, it's not quite like speech and sound schemes in JAWS, but it does allow you to set up, like he mentioned, different verbosity settings, intonation, speed, pitch for different voices.

So you could have what certain set of settings for Alex, another set of settings for Ava, yet another one for Samantha or whatever voices you choose.

And I know that some people like to use different voices with different applications and they maybe use things like settings to do that, activities to do that.

When you go to mail, use one thing.

You go to basic finder, you have another voice, things of that nature.

I've never really done that, but that may be...

And you can have it read different speeds and things of that nature.

So I don't know.

Any of you guys use different voices for different...

I do not.

But I would love to hear from the audience and hear what other folks do.

Yeah, I'd like to hear that too.

Different voices for different apps or whatever.

Yeah.

If we have any hands, Marci, let me know.

Does this behave like, you know, we use, at least on my iPhone, I know I have my activities where I can create those type of settings.

Does the Mac have that or is this their substitution of that?

There are activities and, you know, you can get pretty involved with them, but mostly what it does is it'll change certain voiceover parameters, voices, different things for different activity.

I don't think it's quite as involved as JAWS speech and sound schemes, you know.

You may be able to have a different...

I need to play with that more.

That's something that I know it, I've taught it, but I just don't use it myself.

You know, can you have a different voice when a help tag reads?

I bet you can.

So it might, you know, enable certain things of that nature.

But I think that's interesting.

And what I really find interesting is that apparently some of these things are not available if you're running an Intel version of Mac.

So...

Yeah, I'll try it on my MacBook Pro and see if...

Intel?

I didn't realize.

Yeah, I guess it is.

Yeah, you're right.

2017.

Yeah, well, you go to, like you said, you go to Voice Over Utility, you go to, what is it, Speech, Voices, Interact with the table, and you go pick your voice.

And then there is a...

He said an info button.

What I found, it was a disclosure.

It may say info, but I thought it said disclosure.

And I played with it and it worked just fine.

And then I was doing it in the class I'm teaching and it didn't work right.

And it made me look like I didn't know what I was doing.

You know, which I didn't know what I was doing, but at least I had played with it the day before and been doing okay.

I didn't save any of my settings, but I was able to get in it and get out of it.

Well, I was able to get in it, but I couldn't get out of it.

So I don't know.

I need to go play with it some more.

But I think that's interesting possibilities there.

He mentioned some changes for Braille users.

I am not a Braille user, so I really can't comment on any of that.

And I don't think either of you guys are Braille users either.

So...

I think we're going to strike out on that one.

He talked about the ability to use...

Is it Nimeth code for math?

That would be really good.

That's something I know that JAWS and I think NVDA use.

So that's a big step forward for Braille on the Mac.

But indentation levels, I know that's something that was introduced in Ventura.

Basically let's say you're going through text, and this is particularly useful for people writing code.

It can alert you to when text is indented.

And now you're able to apparently have it give you more information as to the amount of indentation, which is really...

I know that's especially important if you're writing code.

Not much of a code writer, but I've had a little bit of exposure to it.

It did not seem to interest me.

Yeah, well, it would if you wrote code or if you're writing outlines or things of that nature, that'd be good to know.

With a stickler for a professor.

Good for college kids, you know, or people who are educational, just doing papers.

Sure we've got a few in the audience.

Yeah, probably.

He talks about...

He mentioned Siri improvements.

I'm not a big Siri user.

Not even on my iPhone.

I don't find it very...

You know, it does some of the things it does very well and other things it does horribly.

But I have just never used it on my Mac really at all.

But I thought that was interesting.

You said now it's reading numbers at a different rate, which may or may not be a good thing.

I might find that actually helpful if reading out a telephone number or something of that nature.

I was going to say, I was wondering why he thought that was not a good thing.

Because one of the hardest thing I have is when they ramble off the six digit codes or just trying to...

If it went a little slower, I could pick it up.

Sometimes I don't have enough time to pick up the code.

So it's interesting.

That could be very helpful.

I usually have to go to them and go through it digit by digit.

I usually do three digits at a time.

I'm not very smart.

I can't remember more than three digits at a time.

Type them in, then go back for the other three.

So I'm fortunate they give you 10 minutes.

He talked about display changes for low vision users.

I haven't gone in and played with that.

But it sounds like, again, you're able to set up different accessibility display settings for different applications, which could be pretty cool.

Right.

Yeah, I think it's...

I know...

I think when I read something about this, like the main Apple apps, you can specifically change those to...

There's no limit now.

You can just change the font size to a very large scale.

And I wonder if this is limited to native Apple apps.

It might not work in third party stuff.

That's what I read.

It works on the Finder, the Mail, Message, Notes.

Yeah.

Like when Dark Mode came out in the beginning, it was really limited and only worked on native apps.

And it's still hit or miss, Dark Mode on some apps that it works on, some apps it doesn't.

I found that Invert Colors on the iPhone, Smart Invert works much better than Dark Mode.

And they may not have had enough time for individual third party app developers to...

Dan's got a question.

Yeah, Dan.

Yes, that's true.

Dan has a question.

Dan, go ahead.

Welcome, Dan.

Go ahead, Dan.

This CapLock business sounds like a really serious problem.

First of all, Shree, okay, when VoiceOver was saying, "Caps Lock on," were you kind of stuck and you couldn't do anything?

Is that what happened?

I was stuck.

Now, obviously, there are ways to get out of it.

Control Option.

Control Option did what?

Well, if you do Control Option right here, it takes you out.

It's just you can't use the CapLock to navigate around.

Now, obviously, when it first happened to me, when I got stuck, I was using the tab to just kind of get out of that area, which I was able to, but I'd be skipping some areas.

And then- Yeah, it jumps over stuff.

Yeah.

And so then what I did is I just, the solution was, you switch over to your Control Option as your modifier key.

And when I switched over, I basically went to my settings and turned off Caps Lock as my modifier key.

Then everything started working.

I just had to get the habit of not hitting Caps Lock.

So you only had the Caps Lock on, not both?

Not both, yeah.

Yeah, or either or.

Did that answer your question, Dan?

Well, let's see.

I'm still stuck.

How did you get out of, say you were stuck, and then you just hit Tab and that got you out of it?

Yeah.

I mean, when you hit Tab, you're going, it's pushing to some other element on the screen.

It's not necessarily moving to the next element.

So it just took me out.

But you could, at that moment, you could probably do the Caps, you could probably just do Control Option because that does navigate the screen.

You can navigate.

Just to clarify, Sharif, you were what, stuck in an edit field or something?

I thought I was, I don't remember always being on an edit field.

I was just like, you know, when you're quickly navigating, you're just kind of hopping around from, I could have hovered over an edit screen and got to somewhere else I was trying to get to.

But, you know, all I knew was it would not let me go anywhere just by Caps Lock and Right Arrow, Left Arrow.

Okay.

And then Brad, I guess you're not having any problems at all with Caps Lock, right?

Because I don't use Caps Lock as my VO modifier.

Oh, okay.

I just use Control Option because that's what I started out using.

I've just never really adopted using the Caps Lock.

I mean, I've used it in other ATs applications on the Windows side, you know, NVDA or Narrator and things like that.

But it's kind of nice because then you've got two, you know, when I'm on the Windows side, I'm able to use Caps Lock or the Insert Keys or I have a modifier for the left or the right hand.

But I've just, since they're both on the left hand side of the keyboard, I've just stuck with Control Option.

And that's just what I'm used to using.

Apparently now with Sonoma, you can't, you either got to use one or the other, right?

You can't use...

No, you could still have it set to use, that's what Shree said.

He's got it set to use either one.

So he just, when he's stuck, he just can't use the Caps Lock.

So he moves his hand down to Control Option and uses that.

I believe that's still the default is to use either.

Yeah, but I actually turned the Caps Lock, I unchecked it so that it just...

You had to go in and uncheck it in order to use...

Oh, okay.

I misunderstood.

I mean, I'm sure you could, but I just didn't get the performance wasn't as good till I just disabled it, you know, because I'm in such a habit of using Caps Lock.

Even now, you know, I'll hit Caps Lock just from muscle memory.

Shree, I'm thinking that Dan was wondering if you had to go in and uncheck it, how did you get there if you were stuck?

Right, right.

Yeah.

No, because...

So basically what is stuck is the Caps Lock modifier, the Control Option is not stuck.

So you can, if you're stuck in Caps Lock, you can use your Control Option to get out of it.

But you didn't have it turned on.

You didn't have to use either.

Yes.

Your problem is when you're trying to use Caps Lock, but if you use Control Option, you're fine.

Yes.

But he didn't have either.

Okay, that's what I...

Okay, I did not misunderstand then.

No, no.

Initially I had both checked, but I was always using Caps Lock.

Right.

So when this problem occurred, I went in and just disabled my Caps Lock and just checked the Control Option.

But you were able to get out of jail by just moving your fingers down a couple of keys.

Yeah.

The default on a Mac, unless you change it, is to use either Caps Lock or Control Option.

Yeah.

And I always change that because that allows me...

I change it to Control Option only.

And that way it allows me to use my Caps Lock as normal Caps Lock, not have to double tap it.

Does the double tap to turn Caps Lock on or off still work like it always has?

I think so.

Okay.

I wouldn't see why not.

It's just using it as a modifier is the problem.

Yeah.

I think initially I might've just had Caps Lock because when I got this problem, I did talk to Apple Accessibility and said, "Hey, why is this getting stuck?"

And then that's when they told me, "Well, there's a little blue Caps Lock button on the screen."

And then we talked about other ways to get around it.

Obviously this has some visibility with them.

So hopefully the next update they'll fix it.

Well, is that good, Dan?

You got it?

I guess so.

I guess you're muted.

It's definitely at the end of the world because you do have a secondary option.

It's just like for me, I was born with the Caps Lock.

I've never used the other keys.

Right.

You get used to what you get used to.

It drives you crazy when it doesn't work.

Here's the problem I had.

It's not on anybody's list and it doesn't have anything to do with the regular stuff.

But okay, the first thing I noticed, the first day I updated to Sonoma, I have a Microsoft 365 subscription, which of course gives you a terabyte of OneDrive storage, Microsoft OneDrive.

So I have the Microsoft OneDrive app installed on my computer.

Mostly I use it because of course I do have Dropbox and iCloud and I have a Windows computer as well.

And I don't use it as my primary machine, but I use it from time to time.

And one nice thing about OneDrive is having it on my Mac is it allows me to access the documents folder, the desktop folder of my Windows machine, even when it's not on.

So maybe there's something I want to put on there or access something that I know is in the documents folder on the Windows machine.

Well, it's not really on the Windows machine, it's in OneDrive.

So I have OneDrive.

OneDrive has an icon in the status menu.

So when you first go to the status menu, it always starts out on the far left, which is there's something else on the far left, Dropbox, my VPN software, something like that.

So as I say, I'm navigating to go from to something else in the status menu, I guess I could use VO FN right arrow to jump all the way to the other end.

But as I navigate from left to right along the various items in the status menu, when I get to the OneDrive icon, it automatically opens that item as if I stopped on it and did VO spacebar.

And it opens a menu of OneDrive options.

And I can't move once it's open.

If I hit escape, it closes it.

And it also gets me out of the status menu.

But if I do, you know, VOM twice and puts my focus back on the status menu, well, my VO focus is right where I left it on the OneDrive app, and it opens that menu again.

And I am stuck.

I suppose if I were able to use my trackpad and my mouse, I could put my mouse, you know, someplace else and click on it.

But I can't do that because I can't see it.

So I'm stuck.

And what I had to do, I tried all kinds of stuff.

And the only thing I was able to do was while I had that OneDrive menu open, I was able to find the option in settings or wherever it was to exit OneDrive and got it out of the status menu.

And I played with other settings.

I played with status.

Nothing would fix it.

And if I, you know, brought OneDrive back, I had the same problem.

So I just said, you know, I don't use it that much on this machine.

It's nice to have.

I primarily would use it on my other Mac to put things, you know.

You couldn't command tab out of it or anything like that?

Yeah, if I hit the escape key, it would close the menu.

And now my focus is not in the status menu.

But if I VOMM and go back to the status menu, then you're back in it.

My VO focus remains where you left it, which is on OneDrive, and it immediately opens that menu.

It does not wait for me to do VO spacebar like it used to.

So I don't know if the OneDrive people will figure this out or if it's a Mac.

You know, to me, it seems to be an issue with OneDrive.

Doesn't do it on any other item, the Dropbox item, anything else in there.

It doesn't do this.

Only OneDrive.

So I just disabled OneDrive.

The other issue I had was beginning of the day that I updated to Sonoma.

I'm sure we've all gotten these messages when you're in a Zoom call.

Your internet is unstable.

I started getting these and at a very frequent, you know, like not every time I was on Zoom, but almost every time.

And this affected me.

I do streaming for ACB media.

And I would start getting your internet is unstable.

And sometimes I would lose the connection for, I don't know, 15, 30 seconds.

And then it would come back, but it sure was messing up the stream and the recording.

I never really, you know, seemed to lose it, but I would lose the stream continued, but I was losing the sound of Zoom.

And at first I didn't know what it was.

When I monitor my stream, I'll use a lady device sitting here on the table next to me and monitor the stream.

You know, the software on the computer says I'm streaming, but it sure is nice to actually hear it on an independent device that actually confirm I'm really streaming.

You know, so I'm having to send emails to ACB to let them know, you might want to use the Zoom recording because the stream recording is not going to be any good.

So I'm on the phone with AT&T.

They can't find anything wrong.

As a matter of fact, my download and upload are exceeding what I'm supposed to be having.

I think I've got AT&T fiber.

I'm supposed to have 300 and I was like 350 up, 320 something down.

You know, my up was faster than my down, which is usually the other way around.

It couldn't find anything wrong.

And it dawned on me.

I looked at my VPN software and I was getting funny readings from it.

Even though I had my home internet in there as a safe network, it said I was on an insecure network and it was enabled.

And finally, if I just turned off the VPN software, which I've had for years and never had a problem with, the problem went away.

And so I just, I tested it a few times and that confirmed no problem as long as the VPN software is not running.

So I just went in and unchecked the box to make it start automatically at login.

That was last week and I haven't had a single bit of problem since.

So that was the strangest thing.

And why was it affecting, you know, not only my computer, but the a lady device, which makes no sense whatsoever.

But I haven't done anything about trying to contact the VPN people and talk to them about this issue, but I probably should.

But anyway, you know, that's, I haven't had the caps lock issue, but just some other funny things.

But compared to some other issues I've had with other Mac updates, I mean, I've had worse issues.

Yeah, I would say even with my issue, it's not a showstopper.

It's not like I can't use my Mac.

I'm still using the Mac.

It's just, it's irritating.

Yeah, I just had to learn a little bit of a different habit of doing something.

But you know, obviously, like in your case, you know, it actually impacted you doing your work and obviously, yeah, until I figured it out.

Once I realized it's a VPN, there's something going on with that VPN software.

So I, you know, exited it and told it not to start up anymore.

Same thing with OneDrive.

That was strange.

Those could be real deal breakers for somebody not as proficient as you.

Yeah, I had to figure it out.

You know, the VPN thing went on for about a week.

Wow.

And it's interesting because I updated and sure, and within an hour of updating, I did get a text message from AT&T telling me they noticed my internet doesn't seem to be reaching all the devices in my home.

They can tell that's a little creepy, but that's another story in and to itself.

But I looked at that text message.

I didn't pay any attention to it.

I figured it's just a sales thing, you know.

And after all this had been going on for days, and I thought about it more and realized a VPN, I went back and looked at that text message was still there because it had a link in it.

And that happened, like I said, about an hour after I did the Sonoma update.

So AT&T could tell something was going on.

I see one of my notes here says something about you now have the ability to disable autoplay on YouTube videos.

Right.

That's the next thing on my list.

Is that never been available before?

Well, we haven't.

No.

I don't know.

I would think that's a YouTube thing.

But I think that's in Safari.

Or is it, but it's viewed as a...

There's no individual app.

It has to be Safari.

Yeah.

But I've seen that on iOS as well.

So that's something Apple's done across the board, apparently.

I never noticed.

I know the people who have, say, epilepsy and other things, you go to a website and they automatically start streaming and playing things that it can affect people with certain issues.

Yeah.

No, I find it nice to disable that.

I thought I had...

Oh, I know what I've got.

I got YouTube things set to start muted so they just don't start blaring at me.

But there also talks about peering of hearing aids.

I know we've had that on iOS for a while.

But you know, that only works with certain brands of hearing aids.

I have tinnitus.

I have some resound hearing aids.

They require an app on my iPhone to connect.

But other hearing aids just pair with your iPhone like a regular Bluetooth device.

So my guess is if you have ones like I do that require an app, it's probably not going to help you out any.

No, probably not.

But they've always had...

I do just find using AirPods to help me.

But I don't have a severe hearing loss.

Just I have tinnitus.

I have constant ringing in my ears.

They help me if I'm in a noisy environment like a restaurant.

But I don't really need them on the computer.

But I know people that it would help them.

What was Herbie talking about live speech?

I have not explored that one yet.

From my understanding is, let's say I'm talking to my wife.

And I want her to hear what I'm typing so that everyone else can hear what I'm actually typing.

So I guess maybe from...

Obviously, we have voiceover.

Voiceover obviously does that too.

But that's the way I understood it.

Whatever a sighted person would type, or I guess whoever types it, it just kind of reads what's being typed.

Okay.

I don't really get it.

I guess from a voiceover user, in my eyes, everything is read, right?

No matter what I do.

Yeah.

Sort of a typing echo, right?

So we have 10 minutes till the hour.

And I have a question.

What is the oldest map of the world?

I'm not sure you have a question.

What is the oldest Mac that can run Sonoma?

Ah, good question.

Because that I have read about there is, and there's been some other articles on Apple Viz and nine to five Mac.

And it isn't just because of the way Apple has released certain processors at different times.

It's not like you say, all Macs of this year, I know, you know, run it and all don't.

Probably all M, Apple M1, M2, all Apple Silicon Macs run it.

My understanding is the Mac Pro, it needs to be 2019 or newer, probably because that's when they came out with an update and it has a certain family of Intel chips that were in those.

So it's probably that last generation of Intel chips in the Mac Pro.

I believe for a Mac mini or MacBook Air, it's 2018 or newer.

And I think that's the iMac runs an M1 and it had not been updated in a while before they put an M1 in it.

So my guess is if it's not an M1 iMac, it's not going to run it because I don't think they've been updated since 2017.

But my wife's iMac doesn't get updated.

She's got an Intel.

She didn't get it.

She doesn't have an M1 iMac, correct?

Yep.

My wife has an M1 iMac.

She'd come from a 2015 iMac and we already were running into problems when Big Sur came out.

So we updated, got the new Mac.

But anyway, yeah, that's it.

You got a Mac, Marcy?

I want one.

I really do.

The other question I had is you said you teach a Mac class and maybe I have to talk with you offline about it, but I wanted to learn how I could learn details about that.

Okay.

And you have a lot of choices, Marcy, with the Mac.

You can get a Mac mini to MacBook Air.

There's a lot of good entry-level machines to get the cream of the crop.

I teach classes through the New York Public Library.

Oh, with Chansey.

You work with Chansey.

Yes, I work with Chansey.

And I have done an intro to Mac with VO class for a couple of years.

I've done it like twice a year.

And now for the first time, I'm doing a Pro Tips for Mac users.

And it's six sessions.

I'm hoping I haven't bit off more than I can chew, but no, it's okay.

We've just gotten started with that one.

You can find out more about what the New York Library has to offer by going to the Andrew High School Braille and Talking Book branch of the New York Public Library.

They have a website, talkingbooks.nypl.org.

And of course, all their stuff is free.

And you do not have to live in the New York area.

You don't have to be a member of anything.

You just go look on their website and you can sign up and get on a mailing list.

And they have a lot of interesting programs.

So it's very interesting.

Let's see what else is on this list here.

Oh, this one I wanted to...

Go ahead.

Yes.

No, I was going to ask you, what do you guys think about using widgets on your Mac?

You know, I'm not a widget user.

I never liked them in the notification area.

I've had trouble with them.

Are you a widget user?

I'm a widget user on my iPhone.

So I'm kind of interested to think about it because there's certain things that the widget does really well and certain things that I don't find the widget is doing really well.

But I'm kind of curious how well it's going to work with the Mac.

My understanding is they've been in the notification area, you know, VO and the letter O will open your notification area, or you can flick with two fingers in from the right side of the right edge of the trackpad on your MacBook Pro will open it.

And you could use them for certain things.

My understanding is you have to drag them out of the notification area to put them on your desktop.

And now you can just have them on the desktop, kind of like what we used to have with Windows seven once upon a time.

And I think they're actually larger than those.

But I guess if we're not concerned with what things look like.

But I don't know how you put focus on them.

And I understand that the problem has been dragging them using voiceover.

I don't believe that the, you know, move your VO focus or move the mouse arrow to where the VO focus is using VO command F5 and then using the mouse down command with VO command shift spacebar and then moving your voiceover focus outside of the notification area and then dropping it works.

Which you know, we've used that method or the what's the other one we do?

I never can remember because it doesn't work all the time.

I think it's command comma to designate an item for dragging and then come in and drop read.

Is that it?

Start drags, drop drag.

Yeah, drag and designate something for drag and drop.

Move and then let go of it.

I've never been real successful with that.

To begin with.

So my understanding is I don't know of a voiceover user who's been able to figure out how to drag a widget out of the notification area.

And then apparently you're also supposed to be able to put iOS widgets from your phone onto your Mac's screen and then they will work as long as the iPhone is within probably Bluetooth proximity or handoff like you know, the handoff feature, which is Bluetooth, close your Mac.

So I don't know.

I haven't heard of that being successfully used by a voiceover user.

I did want to mention, Herbie mentioned that predictive text thing.

And that's one of the first things I noticed in writing, particularly email, you're typing and you know, you hear a little bubble sound pop up and voiceover talks.

And I found it, as Herbie said, the Apple Viz article stated that it was really annoying and you had to figure it out by going to system settings, keyboard.

Then there's, oh God, what is it?

Options.

Let me find it.

You go to text input.

It's a heading right after it.

There's input sources.

And then there's an edit button.

It says input options and it says US.

And then right after that is an edit button.

And it opens up another window with a bunch of settings in it.

Things like we've seen before, like when you hit the space bar two times, it'll put a period followed by a space, things like that.

Those have been there for years.

But now is in there is in line predictive text and it's on by default.

And that's the culprit.

And it was driving me crazy.

And I was delighted when I figured out how to turn it off.

Because it doesn't just do it in mail.

It does it in anything you type.

If you're writing a text document, text edit.

I don't know if it does it if you're using Microsoft Word, because I hadn't tried that before I figured out how to turn it off.

But it drove me nuts and I didn't like it.

Is it on by default?

It is on by default.

Turn off in line predictive text.

Yep.

You know, and you go to Apple Viz or just do a Google search for Mac Mac OS Sonoma and followed by Apple Viz dot com.

I did a Google search and they've got a good article.

And that's what Herbie used in preparing his recording.

They go through all the changes and things and for both voiceover users and just general general use for voiceover Sonoma.

I mean, Mac OS Sonoma.

And that's where I read about that and learned how to turn it off.

Obviously, it'd be nice if I'd read it as soon as Sonoma came out.

But it'd been out a few days.

And then I read that and I was like, oh, that's it.

And I turned it off and was much happier Sonoma user after that.

We want to ask for questions because we're.

Yeah, do we have as far as we have any more questions?

I know we just have a few more minutes.

We really don't have to end at the top of the hour.

We go a little bit beyond.

But we haven't had.

Do we have any hands?

We're clear.

So we don't have to worry about going past.

Now, let me ask you a question.

You know, like obviously, Brad and I, we jumped the gun.

We went and got it installed.

You kind of holding back to our audience.

We're holding back, you know, like when when do you think like your comfort zone or what do you think will be the factor there now?

I was holding off.

I had a hosting assignment over on the iBug today organization for Saturday night, and I did not want to become disabled on my Mac in any way prior to that.

I think I'm ready to do it.

And I didn't want to do it today because I didn't want to be dead in the water for this presentation.

But I think probably tomorrow I'll update.

And I don't want to caps lock.

So a lot of people say, well, I'm going to wait till the point one update comes out.

I'm going to let all the bugs get worked out.

But I remember when Big Sur came out, it was fine when it first came out.

I tried it on one Mac, and if something happens to my desktop Mac, the MacBook Pro, there's not a whole lot my music, everything else is in iCloud.

If I had to wipe this Mac and start over, it would be an inconvenience, but I could have everything back the way it was pretty quick in a week or so, little things here and there, reinstalling stuff.

But the other Mac would be much more traumatic.

And so I tend to hold off on it.

But I used Big Sur for a while and I said, oh, this is fine.

So I went ahead and updated both of them.

Well then they introduced the point one and it introduced a bug that had not been in the initial release.

It had to do with being able to open the shortcut menu for dock items.

The only way to do it was to put focus on a dock item, route the mouse to it, and then you actually had to use your trackpad to do a secondary click with the mouse.

You could not do it with a keyboard any way at all.

So it was a problem for someone who can't see what they're doing to route that mouse and then do a two finger press on your trackpad to open.

And that went on.

Let's see, it was introduced into point one.

It went on through point two, point three.

You kept thinking, oh, they'll fix this the next up.

No.

It went on to like point four before they fixed it.

You just talked me out of it.

You never know what's going to get introduced.

I mean, they could get some of these things that's kept like saying could be fixed with the point one, but it could also drag on for a while.

It depends.

Yeah, Apple time and they'll break it.

Yeah.

I don't know.

So I'm glad I updated.

I'm glad to try it out.

I'm holding off on my other Mac for just a little while, at least until I decide that I'm not pulling my if I was a caps lock VO user, I might be feeling a little bit more irritated with the whole thing.

But for now, I'll share a little funny story.

So I put up my Mac studio and I heard no voiceover and I'm sitting there thinking like, why am I not hearing anything?

I'm hitting control, command F5, I don't hear anything.

I'm turning the power on, turn it back on.

I don't hear anything.

And what I found out was my keyboard ran out of battery.

Oh no.

Oh, completely.

I had no idea.

My keyboard is plugged in.

And so obviously somehow it wasn't getting charged.

And finally I got, I plugged it directly, you know, wired it back into the hub.

I wired it directly to my studio and noticed that my Bluetooth battery was at 1%.

Wow.

Oh, wow.

So it's just something that troubleshooting, you know, just troubleshooting.

I just, sometimes you think that you think it's a difficult thing and it just turned out to be something very simple.

But it was your Bluetooth audio.

If you disconnected Bluetooth, it was different, right?

Well, I assumed that if you plug your keyboard in directly to your Mac, that it's actually just being powered in all the time.

It's just always being charged.

But I found out that obviously something with my hub got disconnected or something.

That surprises me.

Yeah, hubs are a little weird.

They're a strange animal.

And certainly after an update, it might be good to disconnect everything and then plug the hub in and then plug the devices into the hub.

Yeah.

Well, that took me to a different problem that you and I talked about yesterday.

So yeah, lots of good stories, you know, but it's good troubleshooting.

You figure out these things, you know, like you're troubleshooting.

I've been using a Mac now since I first started in 2013.

So little by little, I've got more familiar with it.

I'm not as scared to death of new updates, what it's going to do.

I've kind of gotten used to it.

I still know which Mac is the one that's going to be least affected if something's terrible.

And that's the MacBook Pro.

So which is the one I tend to use for Zoom and streaming and stuff like that.

But I could, you know, I don't know, I got brave.

I did it because I needed to.

And it hasn't been that bad, but I'm still holding off on the other one just for a little while.

A little while longer.

I think my advice is if you have two machines, upgrade one and hold the other one off.

Yep.

Or if you get a new Mac, keep your old one.

You know, it's good to have.

If it's old enough, it's not too old, then it won't run these things.

You know, it's a good or keep it as a backup.

I know somebody else, they have an older one and she's got a MacBook Pro from 2015 and she still keeps it because it's not running the current operating system.

But it still works and something happened to her M1 MacBook Air.

It just stopped working and she, with guidance from the Apple store, she reset it to factory and it was, she had a lot of problems with it for a long time after that.

She was glad she had the other one, you know, in the bedroom closet and it still worked just perfectly.

So, she had a backup.

So, if you've got more than one, that's a blessing.

All right, folks.

Well, if we don't have any hands, I guess we'll wrap it up.

Thank you for everyone for joining us.

Thank you, Marcy, for hosting for us.

Thank you for letting me.

Thank you guys for that presentation.

I loved it.

I'm ready to get a Mac.

Well, shop around.

Shop around.

Yeah, we should do an episode.

We'll probably do one soon on what to look for in a new Mac.

Well, thank you, Sheree.

And thank you, Pete, for joining me once again.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you, Herbie.

He's not with us tonight, but we appreciate him putting together that nice little roundup of Mac OS Sonoma features.

I think our next session will, November, I believe the 14th, it will be the second Tuesday in November.

So, it's about five weeks away or weeks away, something like that.

So, well, hopefully we'll see everybody next time.

Marcy, you can go ahead and take us out.