I've mention this site before but since I'm about over my head cold and back
pain I've had since my fall in the house a couple of weeks ago, I've been
working my way through all the Mac tutorials from
www.MacForTheBlind.com
I bought a couple of months ago. They are quite good and worth the money.
If you need help with your iPad or iPhone or any other devices, you can
check out John's 11 tutorials on those, too. I think the mac has 12 or 13
tutorials now and the lessons just keep growing every month or two. I just
finished a tutorial on the Finder app which is like My Computer on my
windows machine or like Windows Explorer. In other words, Finder allows you
to move around your file and folder structure. Now I can find my files I've
created using the word processor called Pages on the Mac. I also learned
how to get into changing Voice Over, the default voice on the Mac devices,
and now I am using the voice called Tom because, with the little hearing
loss I have had for the past couple of years, I can't hear Eloquence like I
once could. The voice called Cindy is good, too, but I prefer the lows over
the highs. Plus, there are loads of other voices all on the Mac ready to be
installed when you want to experiment. Since I am a novice on the Mac, I
got my Mac Mini back in early May of last year, I do the same thing I did
learning DOS back in the late eighties. I keep a file called MacNotes that
has headings of things like creating folders and moving files, dictionary
applications, key commands and much more. I can quickly open this file in
Pages, the word processor app for Macs, look up something I've forgotten or
add to it on the fly. A cool feature of the Mac is how, when you are using
it, you can answer the incoming telephone call from your iPhone. I have a
microphone with the Mac and I just press the hot keys to answer the incoming
call and talk to the person through the Mac instead of pulling my iPhone out
of my shirt pocket. Also, I have Windows 7 working now as a virtual drive
on the Mac 1 terabyte drive. I am moving all my folders and files over from
the windows XP machine I have to the Mac and eventually won't be using the
stand alone XP machine because I'll have windows, when needed, on the Mac
that I can switch to by simply pressing a couple of hot keys. Yes, you can
switch quickly back and forth from the Mac drive to the virtual Windows
drive and back again when needed. I am using some freeware software for my
virtual drive on the Mac called Virtual Box and so far, although I haven't
spent as much time playing around with it yet, everything seems to work
well. It doesn't like trying to use the Voice Over synthesized voice from
the Mac when you switch operating systems but two keys kill the Mac voice
and Eloquence has been preloaded when the virtual drive is pressed into
service. In other words, keys allow you to jump back and forth from Mac's
operating system, and to the Windows operating system. I read an article
the other day by a guy who is doing the same thing and since there is no
Morse Runner CW contest program for the Mac, he runs it on the virtual
drive. There is Bootcamp software on most Macs sold today which allows you
to divide the Mac hard drive so you can boot to either operating system but
I wanted a virtual drive so I could go, with the hot keys, jumping over and
back again with it. Anyhow, I thought some might be interested in case you
are thinking of going to a Mac. I'll turn 64 years of age this month, I was
born on Leap Year and there is a 29TH this year so that makes me 16 years
old in Leap Years, and if I can learn how to use a Mac, anybody can. Yes,
it is frustrating at first because you are limited but I found if you
memorize about 25 hot keys, you can get around quite well while learning the
Mac. If you get up to 50 hot keys, you'll really be buzzing along.
Everything else becomes related to each other after that and then you will
really be rolling.
Phil.
K0NX
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