[gps-talkusers] Re: sendero GPS on iphone and android
- From: Mike Arrigo <n0oxy@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: gps-talkusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2011 22:53:58 -0500
I would say that android is just as useable as IOS, though the platforms are
very different and take a different approach to accessibility, one is not
better than the other, they're just different, and take different approaches to
most things, including accessibility. I have an iphone and a couple android
phones here, and I can accomplish all of the same tasks on both.
On Jun 5, 2011, at 7:33 PM, Alex Hall wrote:
> 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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