Hate how often disabled people have to buy new devices JUST for accessibility software. I had to upgrade my old iPhone X to a 14 a few years ago just to get live captioning. My otherwise perfectly fine Mac mini can't do live captioning. Why? because it doesn't have an Apple silicon chip. - ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

ashleemboyer.com • 141 days ago

Hate how often disabled people have to buy new devices JUST for accessibility software.

I had to upgrade my old iPhone X to a 14 a few years ago just to get live captioning.

My otherwise perfectly fine Mac mini can't do live captioning. Why? because it doesn't have an Apple silicon chip.

Comments

slightreturn.bsky.social•141 days ago

Gotta love that capitalism!

billywm.bsky.social•141 days ago

It's probably the case that the appropriate power wasn't there to run the machine learning model that provides this on-device.

Tech companies live forcing pointless upgrades and all but ML models are legitimately compute and memory hungry and there's a real technical reason to such transition

billywm.bsky.social•141 days ago

For example video cards have specific circuitry for H264 encoding acceleration. "But I can encode videos without that!". You sure can. And the speed difference is night and day! Having a function supported in the circuitry makes a massive difference.

billywm.bsky.social•141 days ago

"But it's not the first speech recognition thing ever you could do it before" yeah but these particular models which give better performance use the modern very hungry ("deep learning") techniques

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

But I really don't need an LLM to do it 😕

billywm.bsky.social•141 days ago

LLMs aren't the only kind of model to come out of the current AI boom that started circa 2010. "Deep" image models like convnets suddenly showed better recognition performance, speech models the same etc

billywm.bsky.social•141 days ago

Is Apple running an LLM for live caption?

I'm not an AI-believer but having the Plagiarism Machine predict-next-word for captioning actually makes sense

billywm.bsky.social•141 days ago

(again absolutely NOT saying tech companies don't go "who cares lol" and shaft disabled people. But the march of tech is driven by both greed AND Moore's Law just getting to a point where they go "Oh, we can finally Do The Thing now)

zedalpha.bsky.social•141 days ago

Enshittification!

tonitigerihler.bsky.social•141 days ago

Vicky post was blind. Deafness is advanced by technology in the beginning the plugs from a radio amplifier just boosted enough power to play a guitar to computer programs then it boomed

sethhyneswriter.bsky.social•141 days ago

This is a little different, but in 2021 I updated my phone from a Galaxy S7 to an iPhone 11 (which I still use today) partly because the former phone couldn’t scan QR codes, which were widely employed in Australia for tracking measures during the pandemic.

kurosude.bsky.social•141 days ago

Not to be an asshole but QR scanning apps for android have existed since 2012, you just chose to not look for an alternative and used it as an excuse to buy a new phone (which is valid but not a deal breaker to most)

sethhyneswriter.bsky.social•141 days ago

My S7 was getting slow and clunky, even as I used it responsibly and carefully managed my files, and I'd never owned an iPhone before.
I did find QR Android apps, but for simplicity (and general comfort with Apple devices) I decided to get an iPhone 11, which was extremely good value in early 2021.

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

This definitely falls in the same category!

weareallbozos.bsky.social•141 days ago

If it’s good for customers, it’s good for everybody.

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

What does this have to do with what I said?

weareallbozos.bsky.social•141 days ago

If it matters at all I am very recently confined to a chair. Does this make a difference?

weareallbozos.bsky.social•141 days ago

Sorry, Ashlee, but I have lost the thread.
I will apologize if necessary.
I never meant to offend. Peace.

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

Okie dokie Mike and Carol! Be well

acedean.bsky.social•141 days ago

Planned obsolescence is a real problem on a fixed income.

nekoraxvimpe.com•141 days ago

Absolutely, tech should be universal. It’s wild that accessibility still depends on brand loyalty. If we can make Bluetooth headphones seamless across devices, why not essential medical tech? No one should have to pick a phone based on whether they can hear with it.

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

I’m sooo glad Bluetooth is pretty standard now across hearing aids and phones! One of my favorite features on my latest pair of HAs.

nekoraxvimpe.com•141 days ago

That’s the terrific part. Her old HAs used proprietary signaling for communication to the streamers but the streamers communicated via Bluetooth to the TV and Phone. It was weird. Her CIs, though, are pure Bluetooth.

handle.invalid•141 days ago

Yes, and they know this too.

qbits4u.bsky.social•141 days ago

Deciding that you are an Apple only person is like voting Republican no matter who the candidate is.

If you are a horse being fed hay in a corral, you eat what your owner feeds you, or you die. Meanwhile the horses in the pasture next to you get to choose from a diversity of grasses growing there.

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

Where did I say I'm an Apply only person

qbits4u.bsky.social•141 days ago

You didn't, but you used an Apple product as an example. As someone who has spent thousands of dollars on Apple and non-Apple products over the years, I can tell you that I have WAY more Apple products that don't work with anything anymore due to seemingly planned obsolescence.

qbits4u.bsky.social•141 days ago

I once recorded a beloved Malamute of mine singing onto a Mac I had. I think it was on a 3-1/2" floppy. For some reason, that particular Mac had a rare (Mac only, of course) variable speed drive, and I was never able to retrieve the recording because of it.

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

I used an Apple product as an example because 5 minutes before I made the post I tried to turn on live captioning on said product (which I purchased almost 5 years ago) and found out I couldn't

qbits4u.bsky.social•141 days ago

Honestly, on on a MBP right now, and for all I know you'd have the exact same issues with something that was non-Mac. I was just relating to your problem, that's all. I absolutely HATE feeling like I need to stop using something and upgrade, before something is actually broken.

aukermania.bsky.social•141 days ago

It has to do with the way the processing happens. The chips really do allow certain functions to work appropriately, but I understand your frustration. It’s because most of it is done on system instead of online.

maybenextmonday.bsky.social•141 days ago

This is a rare case where it is probably a true hardware incompatibility. Apple Silicon chips use a RISC architecture that is fundamentally different from their previous x86 Intel, and has hardware ML features completely absent on those Intel chips. Live captioning most likely uses those.

maybenextmonday.bsky.social•141 days ago

They *could* emulate that hardware on Intel, but it would be so slow that the captions wouldn’t be able to catch up anymore, therefore defeating the purpose.

existasresistance.bsky.social•141 days ago

Ugh, proprietary accessibility?! That's beyond shitty, par for the course for Apple (I don't want to shame you for buying Apple, I'm sure you have reasons for enjoying their products).

Still, its hard justifying constant upgrades when you likely struggle to work the same as abled folks

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

I do like their accessibility options for my current needs compared to other devices’ built-in software. I always wait as long as possible to upgrade! Think I got this mini in 2020, a MacBook Air a few years ago. Part of the reason is a lot of dev jobs use mac & switching for personal use is hard.

mettwoch.bsky.social•141 days ago

Don't make this about you, every new feature is not being passed down to older devices. It's commonly known that Apple only gives 4-5 years of updates. Your iPhone X might be perfectly fine but also is simply out of that update range. Sometimes it's not "against disabled people".

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

Buddy I’ve been disabled for 30 years, in tech for over a third of that, and specialize in accessibility. It’s ok if you don’t understand the bigger picture. But just keep scrolling if you’re gonna be a turd about it.

mettwoch.bsky.social•141 days ago

There is no bigger picture. Devices get older, pls get a new one every few years.

joshvamos.bsky.social•141 days ago

Oclp might be able to help you update

symbo1ics.bsky.social•141 days ago

Apple is an absolutely shit-ass company that with an zillion trillion market cap could easily afford to help customers and do things properly

They choose not to and we should judge them accordingly

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

Oh I judge all the companies for shit like this lol

symbo1ics.bsky.social•141 days ago

Good! 💙

tessablackwell.bsky.social•141 days ago

Yep, they're afraid if they make something that everyone can use, they'll lose their snobby cache with the techbros.

symbo1ics.bsky.social•141 days ago

or like, please, just once, Apple, act as if environmental devastation was something you cared about

fujinshu.bsky.social•141 days ago

They do care about it, but only in a VERY superficial manner, and only treating the symptoms when treating the root causes would go against their business models.
They can advocate for Apple Intelligence’s security and privacy all they want, but they’re not fulfilling their environmental goals…

fujinshu.bsky.social•141 days ago

…if they keep locking old devices out of getting new features just because it isn’t the latest and greatest.
I’d trust an open-source cloud a LOT more than on-device AI that is almost completely proprietary.

symbo1ics.bsky.social•141 days ago

well, yes, their consistent forced obsolescence is one of the worst anti-environmental postures, as is their hostility to repair and secondary markets. but as you say, addressing the root cause, capitalism, would require a transformation they will never contemplate.

doxy-cycling.bsky.social•141 days ago

☹️

thekbexperience.bsky.social•140 days ago

I politely suggest you check out ChromeOS, specifically Chromebook Plus devices. Accessibility features have been a key component of this OS for a long time, not an afterthought.

ashleemboyer.com•140 days ago

Not looking for advice 🙏🏻

https://bsky.app/profile/ashleemboyer.com/post/3lhmiq6pcus2h

thekbexperience.bsky.social•140 days ago

Sure, but someone else might see this and feel the same frustration, and might be looking for an alternative. Carry on.

ashleemboyer.com•140 days ago

Then you should make your own thread, thank you! ☺️

thekbexperience.bsky.social•140 days ago

I get it. Sometimes I like to just rant and not actually find solutions to problems too. Cool.

the-caleb.bsky.social•141 days ago

This seems more like a problem with Apple than devices in general.

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

I assure you it's something that's been problematic for disabled people as long as technology has existed ☺️

videostoreheiress.bsky.social•141 days ago

The fact that this technology is designed this way boils me!!!

ghostmaster645.bsky.social•141 days ago

In the flip side this means software for people with disabilities is improving, so that's good.

They are just greedy about it.

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

The software we’ve had for a long time hasn’t been all that bad fwiw

tessaria.bsky.social•141 days ago

We need to make a big move, as a society, to Linux. This would allow us to develop our own features and support them for as long as we want. Open source, people powered computing or bust.

dwarfer66.bsky.social•141 days ago

Get out of the apple ecosystem, it is too locked down.

gysx.bsky.social•141 days ago

Windows computers have live captioning built in and any device that can run W10 would support it theoretically.

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

I’m a software engineer, so I’m comfy with tech, and have a windows laptop, but I ain’t doing all that to try to listen to a podcast or other audio-only stuff. I wish more podcasts had transcripts 😭

sarlotaria.bsky.social•141 days ago

Between Apple, Google/Android and Microsoft devices, I’ve found Microsoft the most accessible, with the most accessibility features (live transcribing, readability, etc.), then Google comes next, albeit more clunky.

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

Here are my nuanced thoughts based on what I use personally and use for testing at work!

https://bsky.app/profile/ashleemboyer.com/post/3lhmahsq66k2t

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/ashleemboyer.com/post/3lhmiq6pcus2h

raantuva.fyi•141 days ago

wtf

raantuva.fyi•141 days ago

Well I can say as someone using an M1 for the last 4 years that it's perfectly good enough so I can recommend that. It also doesn't have the catastrophic, unfixable issue that came up with M2.

wrengr.org•141 days ago

What came up with the M2?

raantuva.fyi•141 days ago

Oh guess it's all of them now including mine. Lol https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/22/hardwarelevel_apple_silicon_vulnerability_can/

hexadecimaldev.bsky.social•141 days ago

Thanks for sharing the link. It looks like software mitigation might resolve it. It appears that Apple was overly aggressive on DMP fetching, I wonder if it actually improves performance or was simply an oversight.

raantuva.fyi•141 days ago

I think it was an oversight, personally. The way the Apple Silicon was pushed to production felt rushed. My dad was in the semiconductor industry for 25 years and scoffed at the whole process. Knowing what little I do from my own studies I have to agree THO he's biased (Intel). Shoulda gone w AMD...

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

Oh nooooo

raantuva.fyi•141 days ago

Yeahhhh kinda poopy. 😭

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

Lol but I have no monies

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

And it's wasteful for the environment since everything else is fine about current mini! 😢

raantuva.fyi•141 days ago

Hm true. I was thinking more secondhand and sell the other one but I also get it. I have an Intel Mac Mini but I'm just gonna turn it into a server.

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

I guess that's easier since the M1 minis have been out for a bit! And I bet there's plenty of nerds that would be up for buying my intel one for the same server purpose lol

celestial-phoenix.bsky.social•141 days ago

Are you able to trade in your device? Also, you can get an education discount on the apple website without proof of being a college student.

jijer.bsky.social•141 days ago

Ohhh rly? This is good to know Ill try it too

celestial-phoenix.bsky.social•141 days ago

From the main page, scroll down to where it says "college education" and it takes you to the education website

celestial-phoenix.bsky.social•141 days ago

That easily saves you 100 bucks if you wanted those features. An m4 mac mini would get brought down to $499.

ashleemboyer.com•141 days ago

Oooooo all great ideas. Looks like I can get $115 for mine!

celestial-phoenix.bsky.social•141 days ago

Happy i could help! 🌟🌟🌟

kynex.bsky.social•141 days ago

I ended up having to buy an iPhone 7, it was the only phone (well, the lowest price phone) that would act as a reader for my continuous glucose monitor. The first Libre, you could use a standalone reader OR a phone, but the 2 got rid of the non-phone option.

squeevey.bsky.social•141 days ago

This is frustrating. I'm sorry you have to go through this.

I think this might be when linux starts to accelerate.

I want a base, empty OS, not a bunch of apps bundled in. Isn't this why M$ & IE caught flack.

They should make a very baseline OS so then we can add or subtract what we use.

squeevey.bsky.social•141 days ago

If a core kernel could be built such that we can add modules as needed then we could decide what hardware we need to pair with the modules.

Apple et al could then have their own apple software downloadable in their own app store.

always1blue.bsky.social•139 days ago

The greedy Corporate American leaders always upgrade so they can continue to get money away from their customers! Customer Service has died sometime ago while corporate greedy CommunNazis get richer

weblamer.bsky.social•141 days ago

Android user here. Google live transcribe on my junky phone and tablet works great.