Just noticed, and liked, these subtle progress bars in Stanza, an ebook reader for iPhone OS. (Although, if a user interface element is so subtle as to not be noticed during several months of use, perhaps it’s not doing its job.)

The usual anti-PC crowd, as usual, gets the wrong message and decides that the BBC is banning the phrase “as you can see” because it might cause ‘offence’ to blind people. The actual, simple motivation is, of course, accessibility — offending people never came into it.

The editor posts a clarification to his blog.

Cue hilarious comment thread where Joe Public struggles valiantly to deal with the concept that blind people might actually use computers in the 21st century.

Brickbats all round, but particularly to these stand-out comments:

• zsalya: People who are actually blind don’t make much use of URLs or email. #
• RelaxedSteak: How would a blind person be able to turn on a computer, open up a web browser find the navigation bar and type in bbc.co.uk or some other web address? #
• bringbackbiscan: this is going to sound insensitive, but what use is a url to a blind person? they wont be able to see the information anyway and surely the audio will only be of use on certain sites? #
• QantumBlip: What planet is the author of this article living on?

  I am all for improving disabled access to computers, I think computers can help disabled people a lot, but, let’s look at this issue objectively:

  The specific complaint was that of television presenters not reading out the URL of websites and simply referring viewers to look at the URL presented on the television screen.

  How useful is a website going to be to a blind person if they can’t even see the website in the first place!!

  So what value is there in reading out aloud the web URL to blind people if they can’t even access the website!

  Now whilst there are some text to speech conversion programs around, they’re only going to be of any use on websites which are very high in textual content, and then how can the blind person navigate around the website using hypertext links if they can’t even see those links in the first place!

  The author clearly hasn’t thought through what he’s proposing. #

• QantumBlip: Someone please tell me, how a blind person can navigate a mouse around a webpage when they can’t see where the mouse is and can’t see where they want to place the mouse cursor.

  If they could achieve that, then they surely could drive a car from one town to another! Not sure the Police would be too happy about it.

  Be realistic folks. #

• mrkcrtr: Surely, if a visually impaired person cannot see the URL on the TV screen then they will not be able to see the BBC website either? #
• JonL87: I have a simple question…if a blind person needs to have the URL spelled out on TV, how would they be able to read the website? #

And, among the few voices of reason, a bouquet to TheRealCatherineO for this wonderful remark:

I’m staggered at the comments that blind people don’t make much use of the TV, computers or email. What do they imagine they do all day? Weave baskets? #

Basket-weaving indeed.

Good advice regardless of beta status, methinks.

Click to enlarge.

If the installation has completed successfully, why would you ever need to ‘run the installer again’? I’m sure this was useful ten versions ago for some obscure reason, but now it’s just another weird UI holdover that serves to confuse your average user.

Normally I arrange myself and my laptop like this:

The screen is angled so that it is roughly perpendicular to my line-of-sight, and my eyes are slightly higher than the top of the lid. This provides a lovely, expansive computing experience, approximately like this:

However, the iSight camera is positioned at the top of the screen, and stares straight out:

This means that the resulting camera image is centered too high:

Of course, I can adjust the angle of the lid downwards so that the camera image is centered on my beautiful fizzog:

But if I do that, the arrangement now looks like this:

The camera is perfectly aligned, but I’m having to stare down at my screen at an angle:

(Angle in photo slightly exaggerated for dramatic effect.) It feels cramped and wrong and I can’t stand it for long.

Mac users are usually pretty obsessive about their computers, and are quick to whine about perceived design faults, but I haven’t heard a peep from anyone else about this situation. Am I really the only person who has this problem? Am I using my laptop in a completely non-standard position? Am I nuts?

Will there be a PowerPC version?
No. Apple is quickly moving its focus towards Intel Macs, and no longer sells Power PC systems in many places. By focusing on Apple’s future, we have been able to bring this powerful application to the Mac platform much more rapidly, and with a stronger feature set.

When Apple announced that they were switching to Intel chips, the first question on many people’s lips was, “How soon will it be before they drop support for PowerPC Macs?” The fact is that Macs tend to stick around for a long time: they hold their value well, and there are plenty of professionals working on Macs that are five years old or more.

Apple knows this, which is why the next version of OS X is going to be Universal (compatible with both Intel and PowerPC Macs). Even Adobe knows that their core customers — graphics and design professionals — will have PowerPC Macs in use for a good few years yet, which is why they are making the next version of their flagship product, Creative Suite, Universal.

It’s inevitable that PowerPC support will one day fade away entirely, but it’s a bit sad to see it start happening so soon.

Am I supposed to type in the number that’s visually largest, or numerically largest?