Problem Regarding iPod Update

Anna Dresner reports to the Blind iPod mailing list the following piece of news concerning the iPod Updater latest release of 28 June.

 

I have some good news and some bad news regarding the June 28 iPod update.

If you have a Shuffle, go get it right away. It fixes several bugs. Some

iTunes music files that wouldn’t rewind or fast forward before now do, and

Format 4 Audible books which wouldn’t play in the Shuffle now do. I haven’t

had a chance to find out whether the Audible bookmarking problems have been

resolved, but this seems to be an improvement.

 

If you use an iPod with Rockbox, however, you may have problems. If I have

the Rockbox bootloader installed, no music in the iTunes database on my iPod

will play when the Apple firmware is running. If I uninstall the

bootloader, however, this content will play. If you don’t have any

protected content, like Audible books or iTunes music store tracks, you

should be able to use this firmware without problems. but if you do, you’ll

have to install the bootloader to play content in Rockbox and uninstall to

play protected content. I have reported this to the Rockbox list; I hope

there will be a fix soon.

 

iTunes 6.0.5

iTunes version 6.0.5 has been released and I am pleased to report that, with the testing I have done, there appear to be no difficulties in relation to the JAWS scripts.

 

Installing Rockbox on an iPod Audio Presentation

I have placed on my web site an audio presentation concerning how to install Rockbox onto an iPod. I do receive a number of enquiries about how to do this.

 

During the presentation, I work through which files you need to download and how to install Rockbox as a visually impaired person using a screen-reader.

Excellent Item Concerning Audio Recorders

I have just listened to an interview concerning a variety of different high quality audio recorders, available on the Blind Cool Tech web site. The item is produced by Tim Cumings who interviews Michael Lang. I thought people may be interested in this interview.

 

It is very refreshing when you hear an item which is interesting and where a great deal of time has obviously been put into the subject delivery and the technical presentation.

Michael Lang has a great deal of experience in using and commenting upon the merits and flaws of different audio recorders, such as the PTR2 and the Edirol products. But apart from that, Tim asks some very good questions and has paid particular attention to the editing of the interview to ensure you only hear relevant content.

 

The item is concluded with a brief discussion about Rockbox and MP3 players which is also very interesting. Michael has both the PTR1 and the PTR2 recorders and, since I would really like to own a PTR machine, I would love to know the differences between both products. Are there any audio reviews available yet of the PTR2?

 

In Touch discussion on iTunes

On 11 October 2005, Anna Dresner from the National Braille Press in the US, who wrote the book The iPod experience, and I, talked on the BBC Radio Four programme In Touch about iPods and iTunes.

 

I did not know this programme had been archived, but I have just found it and here is a link to listen to it. 

 

People Wanted to Test “Buy Track” Script

If you have version 2.71 of the iTunes scripts for JAWS installed, and you would like to test a specific script relating to the iTunes Music Store, then please let me know.

 

Previously, the computer screen needed to be set to a specific resolution to take advantage of the ability to purchase tracks and some other functionality.  Today however, I have implemented some alternative code into this script to see if this may be a way forward for development to deal with this and other functions. 

 

If you would like to try the “Buy Track” script, you must be able to place a JAWS script file into your local settings folder, you must be running JAWS 7 or 7.10, and have a fully authorised copy of the iTunes scripts.

 

Please send me an e-mail if you would like to test this function.

iTunes Scripts and Anna’s Books mentioned in Access World

The iTunes JAWS scripts have been mentioned within the recent edition of Access World from the American Foundation of the Blind, together with Anna Dresner’s Blog which includes, among other things, updates to her book concerning the iPod Shuffle.  You can read the article by activating this link.  Thank you Access World for mentioning these issues in your News section.

 

It is also worth mentioning that the E-Access Bulletin produced in the UK by headstar mentioned the iTunes scripts and the Portable Player Portal site in the June edition.  Again, thank you.  As and when the site is updated to reflect the June edition, this Blog will link to it as will the Portal itself.

iTunes scripts for JAWS 7.1 released

Now that Freedom Scientific have released JAWS for Windows version 7.10, I have produced a release of the JAWS scripts for iTunes to support the new JAWS release.  There are no feature changes, so the version number is still 2.71.

 

For convenience, please find below the links to the various iTunes JAWS configurations for version 2.71.

 

JAWS version 5.0

 

JAWS version 6.0

 

JAWS version 6.20

 

JAWS version 7.0

 

JAWS version 7.10

 

 

iTunes Scripts Version 2.71 Released

The JAWS scripts for iTunes version 2.71 have now been released and can now be downloaded from our web site at T&T Consultancy.

 

There are two small changes.

 

1. We now have better support when copying material to an iPod, particularly the iPod Nano.

 

2. There is a new tool which we think is much better for training the colours.

 

Enjoy!