[gps-talkusers] Re: sendero GPS on iphone and android
- From: Alex Hall <mehgcap@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2011 20:33:17 -0400
Just my thoughts; see the original message.
On 6/5/11, Mike Arrigo <n0oxy@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hey everyone, was thinking a bit more about the possibility of the full
> Sendero GPS product being developed on the iphone and Android. Actually, I
> would think it would be easier on Android than the iphone for a couple of
> reasons. First, Android allows self voicing apps to be developed much
> easier. On the iphone, there is no way for applications to speak using the
> TTs engine that is built in to the iphone, which is what voiceover uses. So,
> Sendero would need to either include their own tts engine, which would
> increase cost, or rely on voiceover to read everything, which would not
> allow the app to really be used in the background.
Are you sure? I have seen apps that speak by themselves (and do not
use pre-recorded files). Also, I would not like to be using the
iPhone's speech and suddenly have something start speaking over it.
Background apps make sense for gps, but talking automatically seems to
miss the point of a background app in terms of accessibility since it
would keep talking over the app you are using. At least if the gps app
interfaced with vo directly, it would not interrupt itself. Also, what
about popping up an alert as a quick and dirty way of telling the user
something, maybe an alert that would disappear after a certain
(customizable) amount of time? That would solve all the problems.
> Also, there would be no easy way to copy maps to the iphone, unless the entire
> country was included
> in the app the way Navigon and TomTom work. Or, it could just download maps
> as it needs them the way the look around app does, but the TTS would still
> be a major issue.
Server-side is certainly one way to do it, but is there not a way to
have apps download data? Newspapers, podcasts, rss readers, they all
download, so can the gps app not do the same thing? This would also
let the user buy only the country, or even the states, s/he wanted to
use.
> On the other hand, Android would not have any of these
> problems. It provides an API
> to create talking applications, and it works in the background, the way
> Google navigation does. Also, copying maps to Android devices is easy since
> you can just connect the phone in mass storage mode and copy the maps to the
> SD card. And of course, with android, there is no approval process to deal
> with, which is why the look around app could be updated so fast. For these
> reasons, if Sendero does plan to expand to other platforms, Android would be
> the logical first choice I think.
What you say makes sense, and I am not familiar with the APIs of
either platform enough to judge. However, the overall accessibility
must also be considered. In other words, due to its vastly superior
accessibility, I feel that many more blind people will choose an iOS
device over an Android device. After all, with iOS, you can use a
braille display, which is great while walking around since you can see
output from speech and also input commands without having to listen
for button labels or hear character names on a keyboard you can't
feel. Just my thoughts.
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--
Have a great day,
Alex (msg sent from GMail website)
mehgcap@xxxxxxxxx; http://www.facebook.com/mehgcap
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