To help remake accessibility training as we know it, visit http://www.a11y.tv/ to view training subscription options and make your contribution to EZFire’s A11YTV funding campaign.

Welcome to the post-April-Fools, pre-WWDC edition of the Triple-click Home Podcast. This month, Jamie Pauls takes the host’s chair and Lisa Salinger fills in for an ailing Buddy Brannan. Their discussion of the top news stories of the month includes many twists and turns this time around, so sit back and enjoy the ride.

Top of the News

Everything to know about iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 (Roundup + New Details)

Lisa recommends the book Cell by Robin Cook

Audioboo / This is got to be the weirdest android voice I have ever heard!

By the numbers: a breakdown of Apple’s Q2 2014 earnings call

Apple v. Samsung jury foreman says the “consumer is the loser”

Nobody knows why Apple would buy Beats, but plenty of people are guessing

Dr. Dre & Jimmy Iovine expected to become Apple executives as part of Beats acquisition

What if Apple bought Beats not for headphones, but wearables?

Lisa reviews the FitBit in our 2013 holiday special

Walgreens & Walmart testing iBeacons, Motorola Solutions launches iBeacon marketing platform

Spotlight: Spring Cleaning

Spring is in the air! It’s the time of year when we throw open the windows and throw out everything we’ve collected over the past year and decide we no longer need. Why not do the same with the apps on our i-devices?

Spring Cleaning iOS: Simple and Essential Maintenance Tips for iPhone & iPad

Community Focus

Journey towards accessibility: We are home!

TestFlight » Fleksy on iOS Beta Recruitment

Sendero Group and RNIB Partner to Release Full-Featured GPS App for UK Users

My Initial Thoughts on the RNIB Navigator App

Accessibility options for iPhone and iPad — Everything you need to know! | iMore

Making DAW Software Accessible for Blind Audio Engineers and Musicians

Solo-Dx Comes to Accessibility Hound

Introducing Perkinput for iOS; the Newest Text Entry Alternative to the Keyboard for Braille Users

App Review: Talking Tuner

Jamie Pauls demonstrates a neat little app for tuning his guitar. He invites listeners to suggest similar apps that they find useful.

Mailbag

From Greg:

Hello all,

You guys have really out done yourselves this year. I nearly fell off my couch when I started listening to That Android Show and Triple Click Home. These are really some of the best shows you guys and gals have done. Keep up the good work.

Thanks,

Greg Wocher(Your friendly neighborhood BlindMan)

From Tony:

What a great job on episode28, lots of voices, snappy pace, and what made the episode for me were the drop INS. The app demonstrations are a great addition, and the app developer interview was so relevant. My hope is that this is the trend.

All the best,

Tony

Another from Tony:

Would you please consider discussing what closing an app really means? For instance, why is it that when I close Pandora, TuneIn, Hourly News, and other audio apps, once closed through the App Switcher, if I do a double finger double tap, audio resumes. Are the apps closed or just resting? Are they eating up battery life? Why bother closing them? If they have a stop button, isn’t that as effective as closing them? Doesn’t seem so. The only way I find to really put them to sleep is by turning off my phone. What’s up with that?

Thanks,

Tony

From Jenine:

Very nice guest hosts of TCH this time and love the app demos from Steve and Ana. Those are a fun addition and I grabbed Google Search which I wasn’t using and learned more about Google Maps which I was using but not lately.

OK, so do you guys have any un-fun hosts at Serotalk?

Jenine Stanley

Wrapping Up

Why your iOS device may be a better cable box than the Apple TV

Apple Store employees switching from iPod touch to iPhone 5s for EasyPay POS system

My Life Without A Smartphone

Contacting the Team

The Triple-click Home team would love to hear from you. Here is how you can get in touch with them:

Follow Alena Roberts on Twitter

Follow Buddy Brannan on Twitter

Follow John Panarese on Twitter

Follow Triple-click Home on Twitter

Thanks for listening!

This month, guest host Allison Hartley joins the Triple-click Home team to discuss the top news stories of the week. In addition to the news, Alena Roberts talks with Tom Green of Somethin’ Else, makers of Papa Sangre, Papa Sangre II and The Nightjar. As always, we include your feedback in the show.

Top of the News

The future of the Mac: What will the next 30 years bring us?

Why Apple ‘computers’ outselling Microsoft may not be fair, but is incredibly important

The real reason Macs never got in the enterprise

Apple maintains enterprise dominance; Windows Phone lags

Report: New content could arrive with new Apple TV “by Christmas”

The iWatch Will Not Be An iPhone On Your Wrist

Apple Reportedly Hires Sleep Expert For iWatch Team

Apple pledges $100 million in iPads, computers and other tools toward Obama’s ConnectED education program

Apple’s iPad Air Has The Longest Lasting Battery Among Current Tablets

News in iOS

7 New iOS 7.1 Details

5 problems a 5-inch iPhone solves for Apple

Verizon confirms ‘More Everything,’ brings price cuts, more data, global texting

Patrick Perdue demos Zoom IQ5 mid/side stereo microphone for iOS devices

Check out BackBlaze, a #VoiceOver accessible cloud backup solution.

An Overview of Five iOS Text Editors

Switching back to Windows

Spotlight: Games

Play a Free iOS Game and Help with University Research

‘Flappy Bird’ Creator: Game Was Pulled Because It Became an ‘Addictive Product’

mailbag

From Jenine Stanley:

So, I’m excited about the usability of the MicroWave audio editor for the Mac. I am stuck though on a couple concepts that don’t seem to be covered by the very well done manual. Where might I go to find more info about using this audio editor with Voice Over?

I’m particularly interested in the keyboard commands for selecting text. Everything else looks dandy but that one has me stumped.

Another from Jenine:

Loved the last show, as always but was thinking as I transition to the Mac, that it might be good to have a segment of your show that looks at the practical side of using Apple products. Here’s how it might go.

Let’s say we choose a task, like creating, editing and reading documents. Then we talk about the programs available, which we use and why, and how they might differ for someone coming from the Windows environment. I know you guys sometimes do this anyway but a more structured look might be helpful.

I, for example, am about to take on Pages. I can open a document to read or edit and see the places for headers, footers and body text but then can’t seem to get much further. I know there’s something I’m missing but just don’t know what it is.

Alena does a great job of pointing out things like Text Edit and the 1-page issue which is hugely helpful. Let’s have more of that.

I’m just glad I can finally understand what you all and David Woodbridge are talking about when it comes to Mac OS stuff now. I usually tuned out if it wasn’t IOS.

Keep up the good work.

Finally from Jenine:

I’m testing out a borrowed Macbook Pro and am down to only two major elements keeping me from the switch. I have to test it with my printer, but I see no issues there.

The Macbook is dated 2012 and is running Mavrix latest version.

I currently scan documents using Acrobat Pro for my scanning needs on my Windows7 desktop. Besides Docuscan Plus, are there other programs that work with the Mac?

References I saw on Applevis were no longer available in the app store.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

From Chris Nusbaum:

Hello to the Triple Click Home Team,

As always I very much enjoyed Episode 26 of the podcast. There was a lot of good information and commentary provided and the interview with Shannon Reese was enlightening. You and the whole gang at SPN provide a wonderful service to the blind community and I am very appreciative of it.

I would like to make a few comments and ask a question in response to some of the topics discussed in the most recent podcast. Firstly, I agree with and relate to the frustrations which Jamie and Buddy expressed about the Learning Ally app. The lack of a rewind/fast forward feature does make it inefficient and annoying; indeed, I find it makes reading my textbook take much more time than it should. If I am answering a question which requires information that is at the bottom of a page, I have to listen to everything on the page to get that information.
If I miss what I need once, I have to listen to the entire page yet again. After Jamie suggested this workaround, I downloaded the textbook onto my Victor Reader Stream and am finding that it is much better. Now there is some news on this subject which I would like to share. I called Learning Ally tech support today for an unrelated matter, but also told them about the issues mentioned above with the iOS app. The tech support specialist told me that they had heard this from many users and were adding a 10-second rewind/fast forward feature in the next app update.
The rep did not have a definite release date for the app update, as it is still in the testing stages. She assured me, however, that this improvement can be expected in the near future. This is definitely a sign of progress.

Now onto my question. There was discussion during the podcast about Twitterrific and, more generally, apps which are not compatible with iOS 7. I used and enjoyed Twitterrific on my old iPhone 4S running iOS 6. However, I found that it was not working very well at all when I updated to iOS 7. It would take a long time to load and the app would often crash altogether before it even loaded, kicking me back out to the home screen. I ended up switching from Twitterrific to TweetList when I was asked to handle the live tweeting of the NFB of Maryland convention, partly because of my lack of success with Twitterrific and partly because I found TweetList to work better with multiple accounts. I realize that this was on an iPhone 4s, which did not work very well with iOS 7 anyway. However, I now have an iPhone 5C. So, have you found Twitterrific to work better on the newer iPhone models? Does it load any faster or have better responsiveness with the new iPhones as compared to the 4S? If so, perhaps I will redownload Twitterrific on my 5C and see how it works. I look forward to hearing your feedback on this. Thanks for all you do; keep up the great work.

Blog comment from Jan Blüher:

Hello Triple Click Home Team,

I wondered why Alena cannot see the weather info in notification center although others can, and started a little search. It seems that the location services have to be enabled for the Weather app to make this happen: Settings; Privacy; Location Services. Maybe you try this.

Keep on going with the podcast. It’s a very nice show. I like it.

Blog comment from Chris McKnight:

I share your frustration with the touch screen controls and their inaccessibility to blind people. In particular with regard to home appliances, I agree go see them in the store for yourself and many times you can find them with raised buttons on those smooth front panels, which I was able to do with my new dishwasher and clothes washer/dryer units. I had the same problem with cooking ranges, however, where controls have no tactile buttons. My solution was to give up on any that had dynamic touch screen menu controls (like KitchenAid models), but I did buy a Kenmore model with smooth touch panel controls, but no menus to deal with. The solution? My sighted girlfriend affixed those little adhesive rubber markers right next to the buttons I needed to locate to control the oven, which I can use as landmarks to find the “buttons” I need. The bumpy markers are placed next to, and not on top of, the “buttons” because they are in fact touch sensitive, not pressure sensitive, so I didn’t wan t to obstruct the buttons from detecting my fingertips. This solution has worked for me and I’m able to independently control my new oven, no problem at all.
Great show, guys. Never miss an episode!

From Richard Applegate

If you want the weather summary to appear in your Notification Center, simply go into Setting/Notification Center and enable Today Summary.
You can disable the display of the obnoxious calendar as well.

Odds and Ends

HuffPost Tech – Why you should put down your smartphone and talk to a stranger

Time capsule containing Steve Jobs’ 1983 Apple mouse excavated

Contacting the Team

The Triple-click Home team would love to hear from you. Here is how you can get in touch with them:
Follow Alena Roberts on Twitter
Follow Buddy Brannan on Twitter
Follow John Panarese on Twitter
Follow Triple-click Home on Twitter
Thanks for listening!

Welcome to the first Triple-click Home podcast of 2014. This month, Jamie Pauls joins Alena and Buddy to discuss the Apple news stories of the past month. John was unable to be a part of the Triple-click Home team this time around, but we trust that he will join us again next month. In addition to our plentiful crop of news stories, Jamie kicks off our new spotlight segment by talking with Shannon Reese whose daughter Eilish has Down Syndrome. Jamie and Shannon discuss the use of the iPad in Eilish’s education. Apps discussed in this interview include those from The Conover Company as well as a brief discussion of the augmentative alternative communication app Proloquo2Go Of course, our podcast wouldn’t be complete without your feedback, and we include that as well. Without further ado, let’s jump right to the …

Top of the News

Google Buys Nest for $3.2 Billion in Cash

CES 2014: Smart thermostat EverSense shows off ‘Aura’ iBeacons to intelligently adjust room temperature

CES 2014: iPhone/iPad Bluetooth accessories for the home & body dominate the show

Mac Sales Rose in 4th Quarter. Or Fell.

Many Mac OS Users Not Getting Security Updates

Apple Pushes Developers To iOS 7

Apple Devices Flow Into Corporate World

Apple patent details optical image stabilization for iPhone cameras

T-Mobile’s ‘Get Out of Jail Free Card:’ they’ll pay your early termination fee to switch

Yahoo announces News Digest, a new iOS app that provides only essential news stories

A T Talk

SeroSpectives: This Year in Tech for 2013

SPN Goes to the UN

Update to Sendero GPS

Announcing the AppleVis Golden Apples of 2013

Digit-Eyes 2.0 has a completely NEW and simplified user interface design plus NEW other New features

Opinion

Opinion: What “three revolutionary devices” will the iWatch be?

Apple Knows Exactly What It’s Doing With Its iPhone Business

2014: The year of the iPhone-controlled everything

Mailbag

From Beth:

Hi, I have been researching and have found stuff about using accuators to do Braille instead of pins. Here are a few links.

Displaying Braille for Mobile Use with the Micro-vibration of SMA Wires

haptic posts on CNET

First-ever Braille smartphone could hit stores this year

The “Feel Screen”: The Pros and Cons of a Tactile Interface for the Next iPad (or iPhone?)

Blog comment from Zivan Krisher

During the podcast I think it was Buddy who stated that it is impossible to turn off Zoom while VoiceOver is turned on. This is not true. I’m a low vision IOS user and often use VoiceOver in combination with Zoom. When Zoom is turned on, double tapping 3 fingers becomes the Zoom toggle. and triple tapping 3 fingers becomes the VoiceOver toggle.

Wrapping Up

This Pressure-Sensitive Case May Change How You Use Your iPhone

The strange, shady world of $1,000 iOS apps

The 12 Apps You Should Delete from Your Phone in 2014

Contacting the Team

The Triple-click Home team would love to hear from you. Here is how you can get in touch with them:
Follow Alena Roberts on Twitter
Follow Buddy Brannan on Twitter
Follow John Panarese on Twitter
Follow Triple-click Home on Twitter
Thanks for listening!

It’s hard to believe that we have arrived at the end of another year. This month, the Triple-click Home team takes a look at the top Apple stories of 2013. Also, Lisa Salinger brings us a review of the Dropbox app for iOS.

This Year in Apple News

One year, four departed execs, and a lot to be determined for Apple
So, what is Apple’s next big thing going to be?

Insiders “now confident” Apple will launch lower-priced, lightweight iPhone as early as June

Apple beefs up iCloud, Apple ID security with two-step verification

Jony Ive Leaves His Mark As Skeuomorphism Concept Vanishes From One App

Apple announces WWDC 2013 details, promises new iOS and OSX builds

Tim Cook issues an apology to Apple’s Chinese customers

Apple reveals details of 50 billionth App Store download

SeroTalk Podcast 153 Discusses the Accessibility of the Kindle App

WWDC 2013, A Lot of Announcements | MacForTheBlind

Apple posts OS X Mavericks preview page

Nobody Has Tried The Real iOS 7

Voice Dream Interview by Alena Roberts

An App For All Creatures Great and Small — Zoomed In

Seeing Eye GPS: a Turn-by-Turn GPS application for the iPhone Developed Specifically for the Blind

Apple’s cheaper and not so cheap iPhone explained

Why a Gold iPhone 5S Actually Makes Sense

Apple announces the multicolor iPhone 5C, $99 for 16GB

Apple announces iPhone 5S: What you need to know

Blind Bargains: A Review of the BARD Mobile App

Mailbag

Hello,
This is for the Triple Click Home team.
Perhaps you guys can cover this in the mail bag for the next podcast.
For those of you that are using Mail in standard view, with organize by conversation
enabled, in messages that contain original messages part of a reply, and it says
“see more from sender”. When you activate the link with Control+Option+Space, have
you guys found Voice Over does not do anything when you press the up and down arrow
keys after expanding the rest of the conversation?
Thank you,

Ali Moosa

Hello there!
As always, I was looking forward to the new episode, and, as always, you did not
disappoint me. It was a pleasure to listen to it!
• I have got very little problems with TouchID on my new 5S. Actually, when I first
set it up, I didn|t have much time to listen to all the instructions and saved one
finger print with three different fingers / right thumb and index finger when holding
iPhone in left hand and left thumb when holding iPhone in right hand. this worked
although I saved it as one finger print.
I did delete it in the meantime and saved the three digits in three finger prints.

• A few days ago, you retweeted a review of Open Office – was it a CNet article_
I think it was.
Has anybody tested Open Office for its accessibility recently? I remember that this
wasn’t too good a while back. Have there been improvements? I am in the middle of
writing my PhD and don’t have much time to play around with office suites. It was
time-consuming and therefore annoying enough that I had to convert a few work-in-progress
documents from RTF to docx. Aaargh!
• quite a large number of people are looking forward to getting RTF back in Pages.
Me too! However, is there a risk that the navigability of tables in Pages is going
to go again, at least in RTF format?
• One last question for now to you and your listeners, a question for which I have
not yet got an answer from Apple nor from an Apple accessibility mailing list in
which I am active:
For links in emails and on websites we can adjust in the VoiceOver settings how they
are announced. That’s fine. Nonetheless, when there is a link in an email and I arrow-key
my way into it, VoiceOver says: “web url detected” – with a voice as if she was breathing
through a helium balloon. There must be a separate setting for this as the verbosity
settings in the VoiceOver Utility don’t seem to have an effect on this phenomenon.
any ideas?
That’s it from me. Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season.

Greetings from Ireland,

Markus

Hi, it’s me again!
I want to share this with you, but the other email would have got too long, so I
post it here.
I reported the accessibility issues in the file export menu in Pages to Apple Accessibility
and got the following…personal!…response, not the standard template.
In the meantime we can explain the dialog box to allow you to complete the process.
In the Pages File Menu, if you selected Word, then Word is automatically selected
in the export dialog.
If, at that point, you press Enter, then you will be taken to the Save as Dialog
box to choose where you want to save the exported file. The file will export as a
word doc with the default settings of
a) No password required to open the file and
b) Using the .docx format instead of the older .doc ( Word 1997-2003) compatible
format.
If instead you chose PDF in the Export Menu, then the dialog box will default to
PDF as the exported filed type. Pressing Enter will again then take you to the Save
as dialog box with the pre-determined
settings of Good Image quality and no password required to open the file.
If you choose to move within the dialog box, there are 5 tabbed areas: PDF, Word,
Plain Text, ePub, and Pages ’09. These are the 5 Unknown labels you are hearing.
Each has some further text or options associated with each option:
Under PDF, the text reads;
“To Change PDF layout settings, Choose File > Print.”
The PDF options are;
Image Quality: with a pull down menu for Good, Better, or Best. The default is good.
And a check box for Require password to open. The default is unchecked.
Under Word, the options are;
Require password to open check box
and a disclosure triangle revealing the format options pull down menu of .docx or
.doc
.docx is the default choice.
Under Plain Text there is only the text;
Create a plain text document that includes only body text without formatting.
Under ePub, the options are;
Three text boxes including Title, Author and Primary Category
and a disclosure triangle revealing an additional text box for Language
as well as a check box for Use the first page as the book cover image. The default
is unchecked.
Under Pages ’09;
The only option is the Require password to open check box.
The default is an unchecked check box.

Markus Böttner

Wrapping Up

From iPad Air to Mac Pro: everything you need to know about Apple’s fall event

My Review of the iPhone 5S | MacForTheBlind

Apple promises to bring back missing iWork for Mac features in six months

All The Changes In iOS 7.1 Beta You’ll Actually Notice

Joe Steinkamp interviews the developers of the MovieReading app in SeroTalk Podcast 179

Apple to Usher in New Age of In-Store Shopping With iBeacon Rollout

The Brilliant Hack That Brought Foursquare Back From the Dead

Contacting the Team

The Triple-click Home team would love to hear from you. Here is how you can get in touch with them:
Follow Alena Roberts on Twitter
Follow Buddy Brannan on Twitter
Follow John Panarese on Twitter
Follow Triple-click Home on Twitter
Thanks for listening!

Help us turn two in this episode of the podcast as the Triple-click Home team discusses all things Mac and iOS includeing Mavericks, iWork and iOS 7. In addition to the news and possibly a rant or two, Jamie Pauls visits with Dmitriy Konopatskiy about the recent changes to the extremely popular image recognition app TapTapSee and what we can expect in future updates to the product. Here is a direct link to TapTapSee in the app store.

Top of the News

Apple Launches OS X Mavericks 10.9.1 For Registered Developers

Apple promises to bring back missing iWork for Mac features in six months

All The Changes In iOS 7.1 Beta You’ll Actually Notice

Sendero GPS LookAround for iOS gets a nice update and goes free:

A review of five iOS navigation apps

Voice Dream Reader, Truly a Dream App

Papa Sangre II on the App Store on iTunes

Blind Bargains: Review: Bring On the Horror With Papa Sangre 2

TapTapSee becomes a paid service

Apple and Samsung together account for… 109% of industry profits

Apple still tops in tablets, despite dwindling market share

Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won

Pandora: iTunes Radio? Pshaw. We’re doing just fine.

iPad Air beats the iPad 4 by 80 percent in benchmark tests

iPad Air topped by Kindle Fire HDX in display quality test

Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display Review

Surprise! Apple’s now selling the iPad Mini with Retina display online

The Retina iPad Mini teardown reveals cross between iPad Air & iPhone 5s

Apple’s New Fingerprint Scanner Is An Epic Fail For Some

Mailbag

Dear Triple-click Home Team,

I am a vision impaired university student and would like to share my experience with using Windows on my MacBook Pro. For the most part Windows 7 runs the best I’ve ever seen it run on any computer, probably because it’s running on a Mac! I use both Boot Camp and VMWare Fusion 4 when working in the Windows environment when I have to. I only need to run Windows in the first place because of my Transformer, long/short distance viewer.

One thing I would like to note about running Windows on a Mac is that a Mac battery, 7 hours, will be cut down to a Windows battery, 2-3 hours when running Windows on a Mac laptop. Of course one wouldn’t have to worry about battery life reduction when running Windows on a desktop Mac, but because I am a student, I need to be mobile.

One last thing I would like to note is that even when running Windows directly via Boot Camp, my MacBook Pro really heats up more than it would ever when using the Mac side of the computer – probably due to the intense graphics processing and operating system structure. Also, I noticed a few times last year that I got the Blue Screen of Death when directly running Windows. So i have to be careful not to put it to sleep to often when in the Windows environment, especially when I’m just seconds away from needing to use it in class.

Overall, in my opinion, I believe Apple handles the Windows environment really well and just to know when one wants to use the Windows environment, their going to get a Windows environment.

I would greatly appreciate it, and even more important, I believe a brief summary of this email would be good to include in the next Triple-click Home podcast for others to take note of.

From Michael

Michael’s World
Visually Impaired Student
www.mts.net/~wefour

Wrapping Up

Apple will now pay you for a water-damaged iPhone or iPad

The craziest things you can plug into your iPhone’s audio jack

Here’s What Happened When 17 Ordinary People Met Steve Jobs

Audioboo / 2013 DJ Marathon – The Karen Jacobsen Interview In Full

Sprint and Best Buy Team Up to Give Students a Free Phone Line for a Year!

Contacting the Team

The Triple-click Home team would love to hear from you. Here is how you can get in touch with them:
Follow Alena Roberts on Twitter
Follow Buddy Brannan on Twitter
Follow John Panarese on Twitter
Follow Triple-click Home on Twitter
Thanks for listening!

Since Buddy Brannan was unable to join us for this month’s episode of Triple-click Home, Jamie Pauls joins Alena Roberts and John Panarese to discuss the top news stories of the month. The team has some app recommendations to share along the way, and Alena rounds out the show with an interview with the developer of the Voice Dream app for reading books and many other types of documents on your iOS device.

Apple Took Three Days to Tell Developers About a Site Hack

Researcher claims he told Apple of Developer Center vulnerability but didn’t maliciously steal data

iOS 7 preview: Siri gets a new look, access to settings, more services, still no predictive results

Nobody Has Tried The Real iOS 7

With Its Acquisition Of Locationary, Apple Zeros In On Maps, Big Data And Competing With Google

With all of our talk of travel, John recommends All Access: Talking Menus.

Apple acquires navigation service Hopstop

HopStop for Windows Phone Scrapped Following Apple Deal

States Combat Cell Phone Use On The Road But Deaths Persist

How Will Apple Handle Verizon’s iPhone Shortfall?

Comparing T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon’s Upgrade Plans

Here’s all the evidence that Apple is making an actual TV—and the remote will likely be your hand

iPad mini 2 with Retina display won’t be released this year?

Recharging iPhone blamed for another serious shock in China

You Won’t Need a PIN When You Pay for Everything with Your Face

Apple should lead the move to DRM-free ebooks

How to request a refund for an iTunes or App Store purchase

App Updates: Fleksy Version 1.8 links favorites with contacts, improves responsiveness and accuracy, and adds themes There is also a new update to MBraile

Seeing Eye GPS: a Turn-by-Turn GPS application for the iPhone Developed Specifically for the Blind

Listen to Joe Steinkamp’s interview with the developers of the iOS game Solara on SeroTalk Podcast 162

Alena has been playing with the crossword game Word Shuffle.

Contacting the Team

The Triple-click Home team would love to hear from you. Here is how you can get in touch with them: Follow Alena Roberts on Twitter Follow Buddy Brannan on Twitter Follow John Panarese on Twitter Follow Triple-click Home on Twitter Thanks for listening!

In this podcast, John, Pete and Buddy discuss the top news of the month as well as the biggest stories of the year. Before Alena left for Hawaii, she sat down with Jamie Pauls to give her thoughts on the year’s Apple news. Here are the stories, both past and present, which made our list this month.

Apple needs to learn how the internet works

Apple’s Contract-Free iPhone Could Benefit Every Consumer In America

How T-mobile’s smartphone pricing could change the wireless industry

Tim Cook hates office politics, loves when you email him

Analyst thinks ‘iPhone 5S’ due in June with better camera, NFC, multiple color options

Google releases official Google Maps application for iOS, features turn-by-turn navigation…

iTunes 11 review: Simple is as simple does

Apple January event to focus on publishing, iBooks, report says

Apple to host January 19 ‘education event’ in New York

iPhone turns 5 years old on January 9^th

iPad vs. iPad 2 vs. the new iPad

Who wants an iPad Mini? About one buyer in two

Tim Cook Prefers Settling To Suing and Has a Huge Quarter

iPhone 5 launching with 4-inch screen, new Dock connector?

Apple’s $1 Billion Win Over Samsung: Q&A

Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display  

Why should I, a Windows user, care about Mountain Lion anyway?

Apple selects TomTom as primary iOS 6 maps provider (update: confirmed)

Mailbag

This month’s email is from Jenine Stanley. She writes:

Hi Guys,

Loved the 12th podcast. I have a couple recommendations for you for apps.

In the time killing games department, I am addicted to 7 Little words.

Sorry, don’t know how much this one costs but you get a daily free puzzle Plus one puzzle zone, 50 puzzles, for free when you start the game.

In this game you have 7 clues and set of letters that form the words to answer the clues.

You must put together the combinations of letters by double tapping on them in order.

So, let’s say you have a clue that reads like:

1. First meal of the day

9 letters

Your choices of letters displayed below all of the 7 clues might be something like:

BR EXE SUB EA JUN KFA ING ST

You would then double tap on BR first then EAC and so on until BREAKFAST is displayed.

You can check which groups of letters you’ve chosen, erase the entire group and get hints.

Your first 15 hints are free. Then you can buy unlimited hints for $1.99.

The entire game, save for one or two buttons is accessible and the unlabeled buttons are easy enough to figure out in context and label. All of the game features are  accessible.

You can earn bonus puzzle zones by completing zones you buy. Buy X number and earn 1 free zone.

On the practical side, I love the app Transit Times. It has the Central Ohio transit authority in it so I can stand at any point in the Columbus metro area and learn what buses come near me, what the nearest stop is to me and when the next bus is supposed to be there. It seems to actually work in real time too with the bus company data. I live along a route with multiple buses and often use other routes with multiple buses so this app is really nice.

It’s completely accessible but does take some getting used to. For example, it’s not really designed to give you the automatic next bus kind of data.

You have to go a couple screens in to get that for your real-time location.

It would be nice to have this as an option on the home screen.

It is designed to give you time tables and other scheduling info and is supposed to help you plan routes with multiple buses. I haven’t gotten that part to work quite the way I’d expected yet, but it you want to know when the next bus is scheduled at your stop, this is a great app.

Finally, for the ladies, although this might come too late for the holidays,

31 Products has a wrist purse that can hold your I-Phone and a lot more.

It’s a nice size little purse that can fit in a coat pocket. You can put your phone in the outside pocket if it has a regular case or inside if it has say an Otterbox defender case as mine does. The inside option is good because it has an adjustable zipper so you can attach the headphones if necessary and control your phone that way without taking it out of your purse.

The wallet part has a zipper pouch, places for credit and business cards and another pocket for change and such It also has a front pocket for your bus ID and other cards you need to get quickly.

I want to say I got it for around $30.00 and it’s available from anyone who is a 31 Products dealer, and trust me, there are lots of blind people out there who are.

Keep up the great shows guys!

Wrapping Up

Apple v Android: the winner is… the disabled community

Contacting the Team

The Triple-click Home team would love to hear from you. Here is how you can get in touch with them:

Follow Alena Roberts on Twitter

Follow Buddy Brannan on Twitter

Follow Pete Bossley on Twitter

Follow John Panarese on Twitter

Follow Triple-click Home on Twitter

Thanks for listening!

Jamie Pauls joins Buddy Brannan and Alena Roberts for this month’s podcast. There are lots of laughs, news stories and holiday gift recommendations this time around. Be sure and listen to the very end of this episode, because there is a little surprise that you could easily miss if you hit the stop button too quickly. Enjoy!

Apple

A More Pocketable, Integrated Apple Under Tim Cook

Apple share of tablet market dips to 50%

HTC Will Pay Apple $6-$8 Per Android Phone As Part of Patent Settlement

Judge to review whether foreman in Apple v. Samsung hid info

Someone Goofed, And Apple’s New ‘Prototype’ Store Is Unbearably Noisy

Julian Treasure: Why architects need to use their ears

Apple gearing up for major adjustments to the Mac

Reviews

Apple Mac Mini with Fusion Drive Review

13″ Retina MacBook Pro review: more pixels, less value

Review: iPad 4 has processing power to spare

Apple Bloggers Love The iPad Mini So Much They’re Calling It ‘The Real iPad’

iPad mini or Nexus 7: Which is best for you?

Jamie Pauls reviews iAssociate 2 for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad

Rumor Mill

New iPhone, iPad, and ‘iTV’ slated for first half of 2013?

iPad Mini Retina rumor arrives early

Holiday Section

Apple adds Passbook-enabled gift cards to its store app

Charge your iPad with a rocking chair

We asked the Triple-click team to submit their holiday wish list. John and Buddy would really like a new Mac. Alena would like a stand for her iPhone that would allow her to stabilize the camera for optimal OCr. Jamie Pauls announces that he has just ordered a 13-inch Macbook Pro. Alena suggests a word processor called Bean and Buddy recommends the Sophos antivirus package. Derek Lane drops by and offers a few recommendations of his own. We will check back with Pete next month to see what he wants for Christmas.

Mailbag

Dave from Ireland:

Hi folks,

Another great episode of 3CH, thanks. I just thought I’d respond to a couple of things

from the mailbag section.

1. The guy with the crashing App Store.

As you said, he didn’t mention which device he’s using. However I have had this issue

on my 3rd Generation iPad. As you know, the App Store has several tabs at the bottom

of the screen, and when you open it, it opens into whichever tab it was in when you

last closed it. The crash happens when the selected tab it is trying to open into

is Top Charts. So I have trained myself to remember to put it in any other tab whenever

I’m closing the App Store.

The only way to open the App Store in this situation seems to be to turn off VoiceOver,

open the App Store, and then turn VoiceOver back on again.

I have emailed Apple about it and they replied to say they are aware of it.

2. Actions Menu.

I’ve heard and read a lot of people talking about how you can go to the Actions menu

to delete mail etc. by finding Actions in the rotor. I’ve noticed that a lot of people

don’t seem to realise that when you’re in your inbox, the rotor goes automatically

to Actions, so you don’t have to find it in the rotor, you just have to flick down

when on the message you want to delete.

I’m sure a lot of people know this, but I just think it’s a tip worth mentioning

as I’ve heard a lot of people saying to go through the rotor.

As for text messages etc. being read out in a voice like the sender’s, this frightens

the life out of me, lol. Have you heard the Irish voice, Maire, she’s absolutely

awful!!

Keep up the good work.

Blog comment from Kathy Blackburn:

Dear 3ch Team:

I’m writing in response to your advice to hard reset the iPhone by holding down the

home button and the sleep button. Up until IOS Version 6, hard reset was harmless.

With the introduction of Version 6, however, a hard reset results in the loss of

VoiceOver, and the only way to get it back is to connect your phone to a computer

to turn VoiceOver on in iTunes.  I emailed accessibility@apple.com, and they are

convinced that this is not a bug, that this is what is supposed to happen.  So I

no longer re-boot my phone this way.

Wrapping Up

AT&T expands FaceTime to individual iOS device users on LTE

Massachusetts rail commuters can now use smartphones instead of tickets to ride

Contacting the Team

The Triple-click Home team would love to hear from you. Here is how you can get in touch with them:

Follow Alena Roberts on Twitter

Follow Buddy Brannan on Twitter

Follow Pete Bossley on Twitter

Follow John Panarese on Twitter

Follow Jamie Pauls on Twitter

Follow Triple-click Home on Twitter

Thanks for listening!