S1: Hello everyone. Welcome to Talking Tech. This edition available from
S1: December the 17th, 2024. I'm Stephen Jolly, great to have
S1: you with us listening through Vision Australia Radio associated stations
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S1: Vision Australia radio talking tech podcast. Vision Australia radio talking
S1: tech podcast with me. Vision Australia's national access technology manager.
S1: Damo McMorrow. Hey, Damo.
S2: Hi, Stephen. How are you doing?
S1: Very good. Well, it's been a big week with it
S1: has upgrades to products, devices, etc. we were anticipating some
S1: Apple updates last Tuesday there was a late hitch and
S1: there was a release. Two version came down on the Tuesday,
S1: and the final public version came down on the Thursday.
S1: So that's when we got our iOS 18.2 for the
S1: iPhone and the iPad. Let's talk about it.
S2: Yeah, it's quite a significant update and a very much
S2: sort of anticipated update, this one. Um, one of the
S2: things that there has been much fanfare about has the
S2: Apple intelligence feature. That's the sort of Siri Mark two,
S2: if you like, or a much improved Siri, but it
S2: does a number of other things as well. So with that, uh,
S2: the Siri voices seem to have changed slightly. The Australian
S2: male one sort of sounds bored and rather sulky. But anyway,
S2: that's an aside. Um, the but they've also now, um,
S2: increased series capability Significantly to the point where, for example,
S2: if you ask it something that it doesn't have in
S2: its own databases, it will say, do you want me
S2: to use ChatGPT for that? And you can also say
S2: to it, ask ChatGPT about, you know, whatever it might be,
S2: and you'll get a much longer answer. You won't get
S2: that sort of. Here's something I found on the web
S2: that might possibly help, which was the used to be
S2: the standard response when it didn't know something. There's that feature.
S2: You can get much more accurate sort of travel information
S2: and those sorts of things from it. It's really just
S2: worth playing around and experimenting, but I would be very
S2: surprised if people didn't notice a massive difference in terms
S2: of Siri.
S1: I think that's the point, isn't it, just to play
S1: with it and you never know what you might discover.
S1: I asked her to tell me how far it would
S1: be by car from where I was to a particular
S1: address in Melbourne, and it came straight back with it
S1: and it was pretty accurate. So I don't have to
S1: go to Google Maps or those sorts of little pathways
S1: to find out those sorts of things now.
S2: You're absolutely right. And it's one of those things. I mean,
S2: I sort of had almost stopped using Siri for a
S2: lot of things because it just used to frustrate me,
S2: whereas now I'm actually using it much more than any
S2: of my smart speakers, because I'm getting better responses from it.
S1: Let's talk about email.
S2: Yes. So there's a couple of significant changes here. Part
S2: of the Apple intelligence system, if you like, is that
S2: it can summarize content. So when you're going through an
S2: email thread, it will give you a summary of what
S2: each email is about as you as you're flicking through them.
S2: And it does the same in other things as well.
S2: So it'll give you summaries on your lock screen of
S2: your different notifications and things. But the other one that
S2: people will notice is a significant change to the layout
S2: of the email app. Um, what happens now is that
S2: there's a bunch of filters at the top of the
S2: screen and there's things like, um, primary, there's as promotions,
S2: transactions and a couple of other different categories. And so
S2: what it tries to do by default is it will
S2: try to divide your mail up into categories, which is
S2: very smart and quite interesting, but it will sort of
S2: throw you off a little bit if all you want
S2: is your email the way you've always had it. Now
S2: there are a couple of ways you can get it
S2: to that point. One is as you go through the filters,
S2: there is a more button and there's an option there
S2: called list, which will set it back to how it
S2: used to be. Or you can just deselect all of
S2: any of those filters. Um, it'll default to, I think, uh,
S2: primary or something like that. It says, um, and if you,
S2: if you double tap to unselect that, you'll get your
S2: mail in that same sort of format that it used
S2: to be where you'll just see everything.
S1: I found it convenient just to press the more button
S1: near the top of the screen gave you a list
S1: of things, and you just select list and away list.
S2: Yeah, that's probably the the easy, easiest way to do it.
S2: I mean, it is quite clever in that you can
S2: probably easily skim through and identify all of those, you know,
S2: all of the Boxing Day sale and Black Friday sale
S2: type emails that everyone's likely to get in their inbox
S2: at this time of year, those sort of promotional things. Um,
S2: and obviously using the transaction filter that will identify things
S2: like bills and all of those sorts of things in
S2: an easy way. So that's, um, it is quite impressive
S2: the way that it does that. But it's nice that
S2: you can still have your email looking and feeling the
S2: way it always has.
S1: There's a thing called Image Playground and also a gen
S1: emoji feature. So it's doing a lot with images really
S1: isn't it?
S2: Yes it is. So the gen emoji allows you to
S2: generate your own emojis for those people that use them.
S2: I have to say, I'm not one of them. I've
S2: never really gotten into that other than when I communicate
S2: with my daughter. Um, because I don't know, she she
S2: she likes it, but, uh, um, the and the image
S2: playground allows you to, um, sort of use a text
S2: description and have it, uh, generate an image for you
S2: based on that. Um, I'll have to ask it. What
S2: happens if I if I request a horse with no name? Um,
S2: but you could, you know, ask for, you know, a
S2: horse without a tail or a dog with two heads
S2: or something like that, and it would be able to
S2: generate the an image for you.
S1: Why you would want to, but it could do some
S1: very useful things too.
S2: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely.
S1: So a lot to explore in iOS 18.2, which has
S1: come to the iPhone and to the iPad. Let's move
S1: on now to experimentation you've been doing this week with
S1: videos and video description.
S2: Yes. And the thing that prompted this actually was that I,
S2: I managed to get my boat out last weekend. It's
S2: been I've had it since August and every, every weekend
S2: is just about been either too windy or too rainy.
S2: And I managed to get the boat out last weekend
S2: and went fishing, and I had my Ray-Ban meta glasses,
S2: and I took some video while I was reeling in fish,
S2: and also just some video of kind of, um, standing
S2: in the boat and looking around at the ocean. And
S2: that prompted me to sort of think about, you know,
S2: being able to get the videos described. And there are
S2: two ways of doing it. There is seeing AI now
S2: has that ability. So it's part of the scene channel
S2: in seeing AI. Um, and for a while we've been
S2: able to get descriptions of photos or, or take a
S2: picture and get a live description. But now you can, um,
S2: give it a video from your, uh, from your camera
S2: roll so you can select a video, I think, up
S2: to ten minutes in length, and you're allowed ten videos
S2: per day that you can have described. So the idea
S2: is you, you, you pointed at the video, um, And you,
S2: it'll sit there and do the normal seeing eye kind
S2: of processing noise that it does for a couple of minutes.
S2: And then what it'll do is it'll start playing the
S2: video in short snippets with, um, descriptions read out in
S2: between those snippets. So, for example, you'll hear like in
S2: the video that I tried it with, you would hear
S2: the sound of the water lapping against the boat and
S2: my friend saying, oh, just bring your rod tip down
S2: a little bit. And then the description would say, A
S2: man in a blue shirt reeling in a fish, and
S2: then you'll hear a little bit more audio and it'll say,
S2: another man, you know, reaches over and and grabs the
S2: end of the rod, um, you know, out of out
S2: of the water or whatever it might be. And then
S2: it sort of described the, the fish, and it described
S2: my friend Jim trying to get the hook out of
S2: his mouth and so on. So, um, it's it's quite
S2: nice in that it gives you sort of a almost
S2: real time description. And the nice thing about the way
S2: that works, of course, is that if I was editing
S2: that video, I could probably use that description to roughly
S2: line it up and go, oh, hang on, I've got
S2: 15 seconds here where I was looking down, or I
S2: was looking up at the boat canopy rather than at
S2: the fish or whatever. I can edit that out. Um,
S2: so that was that was part of what what prompted
S2: that interest? The other way of doing it is using
S2: an app called Pixie Bot and it's spelt p I
S2: c c y. Um, and it is a paid product
S2: to be able to get the, the, a lot of
S2: the features, it does it in a slightly different way
S2: in that it processes the video and then just gives
S2: you a description, but it will use certain sort of
S2: cues in the video to say, at this point in
S2: the video, um, you know, there's a splashing noise as
S2: the man throws the fish back over the side of
S2: the boat, for example, but the description is not interlaced
S2: with the audio, if that makes sense.
S1: So it actually takes notice of what it sees as
S1: well as what it hears spoken in the.
S2: That's right, that's right. So it is two very different
S2: sort of experiences in terms of having your video described.
S2: But I think they are probably equally valuable in, in
S2: different circumstances.
S1: Very interesting. The two apps you were using, their seeing eye,
S1: which is a bit of a Swiss Army knife really,
S1: you can do it really is, isn't it? And the
S1: other one, Pixy Bot plc bot. So have a play
S1: with those if you're interested in video description.
S2: Yeah, absolutely. It's just nice to be able to have
S2: a go at taking a video, I think as a
S2: blind person and then having a rough idea of what
S2: the result was.
S1: It's been a big week for Humanware. People like to
S1: get their stuff out before Christmas, I think. And Humanware
S1: have announced some upgrades to their Braille display products, the
S1: Mantis Braille Display and the brilliant series, the B20 X
S1: and the B40 X. Tell us quickly about those devices.
S2: Sure. So the brilliant B20 and B40 X are there
S2: refreshable Braille displays that have the Perkins style keyboard? Obviously,
S2: the B26 is a 20 cell display and the 40
S2: X is a 40 cell display. And then we have
S2: the mantis, which is the 40 cell braille display equipped
S2: with a Qwerty keyboard.
S1: The Braille enters had text to speech for some time
S1: in this upgrade. That feature went to the mantis.
S2: It did, which is really quite significant for mantis users,
S2: because that's a feature that I think a lot of
S2: people have wished we had for quite a long time.
S2: So yeah, the whole family now has, um, text to
S2: speech built in, and.
S1: There's an interesting package of other features that have gone
S1: to both devices.
S2: Yes. So there is, um, a number of interesting new features.
S2: We now have access to Wikipedia and Wiktionary directly from
S2: the device. That obviously requires an internet connection, but it
S2: does mean that you can look things up directly from
S2: your brain or your mantis without having to first pair
S2: it to your phone or your computer. And there is
S2: also an on board dictionary which you can access offline.
S2: So even if you're not connected to the internet and
S2: you just want to quickly look up something, you can
S2: do that from the device as well. There are also
S2: some significant audio improvements, so you can now pair your
S2: device to either Bluetooth headphones or a Bluetooth speaker, or
S2: even Bluetooth hearing aids. So those that use hearing aids
S2: may actually now benefit more from the text to speech,
S2: because you can have it piped directly into your Bluetooth
S2: hearing aids. And there's also now support via Bluetooth for
S2: the Apple TV as well. So definitely quite a significant upgrade.
S2: And you can do that upgrade online. Just connect your
S2: device to Wi-Fi and you can download the update that way.
S2: There's no um, sort of you don't have to send
S2: it back or anything to get the upgrade. That Apple.
S1: TV implementation. That's a big one, isn't it?
S2: It will be. I haven't had a chance to try
S2: it yet on my Apple TV, but I do have
S2: a brilliant here. So that's on my list for this
S2: coming weekend to experiment with that, because I think it'll
S2: be quite good.
S1: So that's the mantis and the brilliant series, both those
S1: products from Humanware. Braille displays and major upgrades this week.
S1: Before we go, a reminder that you can find details
S1: of this program and previous editions by going to VA
S1: radio.org/talking tech. VA radio.org/talking tech. And to right to the program.
S2: You can email me Damo. Damo McMorrow MSI MoU at
S2: Vision Australia. Org and thanks to everybody who has been
S2: doing that.
S1: Damo McMorrow at Vision australia.org. This has been talking tech
S1: with me has been Vision Australia's national access technology manager
S1: Damo McMorrow. I'm Stephen Jolly. Take care. We'll talk more
S1: tech next week. See you.