Android Overtakes Apple with 44% Worldwide Share of Mobile App Downloads - <AUTHOR> http://www.abiresearch.com/press/3799-Android+Overtakes+Apple+with+44%25+Worldwide+Share+of+Mobile+App+Downloads

<comment><USER2> The one thing that's not possible to test is when a download is uninstalled, which affects this metric significantly.

I find that I install a lot of android apps, but uninstall the vast majority of them. My iOS device, on the other hand, gets fewer downloads, but virtually all are paid and virtually all have stayed for good.

After owning 3 android devices, iPod touch and an iPad 2, I've come to the conclusion that the iOS apps are substantially better. To balance the field I have to download many android apps to find the best ones, which has been a challenge because most of the android and amazon markets are complete crap.

One example... I use audiogalaxy for streaming music. The iOS version is perfection, it streams well, UI has no glitches that I've found and it uses the iOS dev patterns well. The android version has many UI issues, it's sluggish and buffering works, but not as well as iOS. In addition, the menu system is convoluted on android making it very difficult to navigate. This is just one example, there are many android apps that have these issues (same thing with beyondpod).

I am impressed with android numbers (those of us who bought G1's never thought this day would come), but I don't think it's translating into more sales. Android still has a long way to go before it catches up with iOS, imo.

<comment><USER3> Apple's marketshare for computers priced over $1000 is >90%, meanwhile the largest personal computer manufacturer in the world is looking to exit the business. I think this is a harbinger for what iOS and Android will become.

There is definitely some maturing required to occur on the Android side and I think this is represented by the continuing hesitation of pay app developers on the platform. The article didn't shed light on the revenue figures but rather concentrated on downloads only, which as per your experience can be misleading. Additionally the split between paid/unpaid and the average revenue on paid apps would be the meat necessary to attract developers. I feel this may be a long-running issue for Android as one of its primary attractions for users is the low acquisition cost, thus it's marketed to a consumer who is less likely to spend. (Seconded by the high piracy rates on Android.) This creates a cyclical issue, the android app store quality becomes diluted by lack of signature apps, so consumers become less likely to purchase apps from a store where they are accustomed to receiving poorer quality applications. So developers don't consider Android the first-platform of choice, thus perpetuating the cycle. For consumers buying become a risk exercise, thus pushing more favour to the ease of piracy, and developers to ultimately consider the platform secondary.

Actual Android penetration is also difficult to gauge, while iOS has predictable hardware, retail and pricing. Android-based phones have received significant sales promotion offers (e.g. 2 for 1 is quite common), the models available fit across a price and technical spectrum from top notch to crappy- phone-that-can't-do-much. I believe this leads to why app downloads are lower per device. (When the randomness of consumers should yield a similar app- download figure, perhaps even slightly skewed towards Android due to the larger amount of test and free software available.) Instead we see Android lagging despite having significantly more devices in the wild. (This doesn't build confidence for quality developers to make Android a priority destination.)

On the other hand Google's priority is to ensure ubiquity (whether good or bad phones), such that their ad revenue based services don't miss the smartphone revolution. Their strategy for this is effective, it's reminiscent of windows vs mac os. In the end iOS isn't Android's problem - Apple's iOS strategy will always be selling less units than Android, but as we've seen in computer manufacturers it may not be about how many you sell, but rather how profitable it is to sell at all.

Side note: Unfortunately for everyone, this means there will always be Android/iOS flame wars in the same way we've come to expect Windows/Mac OS/Linux flame threads. The plus side is that innovation will be continuous for both platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As an Android developer, I love this trend. It's amazing to be able to reach such a large and growing audience in the mobile world without having to live inside Apple's ecosystem. It's also exciting that the high-end Android phones out now are increasingly awesome. I hope this translates into an increase in paid apps' success, given that more users with more money seem to be using Android.

<comment><USER5> Are you selling Android apps in the Market? If you are, have you experienced any changes in peoples propensity to purchase Android apps in the Market?

<comment><USER4> I'm not selling yet, no. I've released one app in the market (pressureNET, a crowdsourced barometer network for tablets) that I'm looking to monetize over the next few months and I'm hoping selling weather prediction apps will be possible :)

I'm still in the very early stages of the free app, though, so there's lots of room and little data from my end on selling paid apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems the number of Android ad impressions has doubled over iOS ad impressions, too:

[http://phandroid.com/2011/10/25/millennial-android- doubles-i...](http://phandroid.com/2011/10/25/millennial-android-doubles-ios- impressions/)

<comment><USER7> No, that's not actually the case. Or at least, not from that report. The Millennial numbers are about one thing alone: the Millennial network. If we knew that the install base for Millennial-provided ads exactly mirrored the install base for smartphones, then yes, but: that's not actually the case, as different ad nets are used to different extents on different devices. For example, you could put out a press release trumpeting iOS 100% domination of mobile ads if you just used numbers from iAds...

<comment><USER6> It's not just a one time state that shows this. Millennial has been posting these reports every quarter or so, and I do remember at least a few of them when iOS was ahead. It's probably not completely accurate, but it does show a trend, from iOS dominating their stats a year or so ago, and now Android dominating them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ABI is trying to sell the report, so they use a bait headline and press release.

A little digging on the report, and you find out it does not include iPod Touch or iPad in the numbers, pretty much making it worthless.

<comment><USER9> Not worthless, still a very interesting statistic.

There is not just one good statistic, and all the rest are useless. Different statistics tell different things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm willing to bet that the Android Market's percentage of paid app downloads is still negligible.

<comment><USER11> Considering many of the top grossing apps on Android (and iOS as well) are free with in app purchasing, I am starting to believe paid app downloads are going to increasingly become a niche market for apps.

<comment><USER6> You're right. Last I checked free apps were like 2/3 of the total number of apps in the Apple Appstore. Now it could be higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If true, this has been a while coming, but I'm taking the source with a grain of salt. It makes no mention of methodology for data gathering. Apple don't, in general, share their data. Nor do Google. It doesn't mention of what a "Mobile App download" is. Are iPod Touch and iPad included in the stats (which make more > 50% of iOS installations)? In app purchase data? What about Amazon App Store?

Of course, the only way to get the even skimpy details is to cough up a price (that isn't even available until you log in). The rest of their site seems to indicate that "Mobile" means phone handsets, which are _not_ the only source of installs for iOS and Android.

Edit: I had a small rant about "analysts", the plague of our industry, but decided it didn't add anything (I hope I'm preaching to the converted).

<comment><USER13> It sounds like they are including third party app stores, presumably including Amazon's:

 _Being a free platform has expanded the Android device install base, which in turn has driven growth in the number of third party multi-platform and mobile operator app stores_

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would like to see data on developer profits from paid/ad based apps though. I wonder if this may be due to more free apps on the Android Marketplace.

</comment><comment><USER15> There are an infinite number of metrics to compare devices. But this is a pretty general one.

You could also do profits, users, developers, developer income, apps available. Give it up, it's arbitrary and you're not doing much more than justifying the conclusions you've already made about the platform.

<comment><USER13> The audience for this metric isn't consumers choosing whether to get an iPhone or an Android phone. It's developers choosing whether to support iOS, Android or both. For that audience, this is a very relevant metric. It's also a fairly objective one.

(Of course there's a second-order effect: users will choose a platform partly according to how well it's supported by developers. But anyone choosing which phone to buy now on the basis of this metric is betting on a longer term than they'll probably keep that phone for.)

<comment><USER16> The 2010 revenue for the App Store was something like 17 times that of the Android Market even with a smaller market share.

I think the platform you pick has more to do with how your application/service works rather than market share.

<comment><USER13> Sure, number of potential installs isn't the _only_ relevant metric. I was just questioning the assertion that it wasn't a relevant metric at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Aks HN: How to improve self-control? - <AUTHOR> Hey! I think I have self-control problem. Currently in my 30s and do not seem to be able to discipline myself. Did you ever have similar problem? Was there a way for you to improve your self-control? <comment><USER2> I've personally found that my self control is significantly influenced by the amount of sleep I get. The less sleep, or lower quality sleep I get, the worse self control I have. I also find that observing (through journalling on my day) and general mindfulness of the activities I do allows me to see how I'm behaving and understanding what things I'm doing (such as wasting time on HN) is stopping me from having the discipline I want. After observation I then identify and plan ways to avoid those behaviours in the future.

<comment><USER3> I can second this, lack of sleep changes the way I think!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1) Negotiate with yourself about what you're willing to do.

2) Incremental changes are incredibly powerful.

Can you manage to study for an hour today? Okay, maybe not - an hour is a long time. Can you do it for 15 minutes? If yes, then do that. And tomorrow aim for 16 minutes. And if you fail, go back to the minimum that you can do and start over. You have 5 junk meals every week - can you have a week with only 4? You probably can and it's a much better way to approach this than trying to eat perfectly clean for a few days and then binging when you have the tiniest slip in your diet.

These small incremental changes work because eventually you hit a point where you're getting a positive feedback loop and what used to be difficult becomes easy. And I think that this is more effective than being your own tyrant - trying to act perfectly and feeling like you failed when you don't meet that expectation.

Your overall willpower is somewhat limited, but the limits of what you can easily do are fuzzy, so you can use that to your advantage by pushing your limits a teeny-tiny bit each day.

</comment><comment><USER5> _I think I have self-control problem._

Most people do, don't beat yourself up over it. The whole concept of discipline and self control seems rather dubious to me.

Some things are easiest to deal with by changing your environment, eat too much junk food then don't keep any in the house, watch too much TV then get rid of the TV, spend too much time on the internet then cancel the broadband connection. I ride my bike everywhere because I don't have a car.

Other things you can trick yourself into doing, if you buy too many sweets when shopping then don't shop when you are hungry and always take a list. If you don't exercise enough then book a regular session with a trainer where the cost of cancelling is high.

Big changes in your life are also a good time to change other things, moving house, getting a new job, getting married are all good times to instigate a new regime.

<comment><USER6> I think you got it right. It took evolution many tries to make you lazy with a taste for sugar - don't fight it head on.

Be smart about your environment and make the habits you desire so easy to maintain that you won't need self control to stick with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Build up positive habits slowly. Once they're habits it doesn't take as much self control to do them.

</comment><comment><USER8> [https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Marcus-Aurelius- Antoninus...](https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Marcus-Aurelius-Antoninus- Classics/dp/0199540594)</comment>


Ask HN: Resources for blind developers and sysadmins? - <AUTHOR> Two weeks ago, I woke up one morning with slightly blurry vision and a big, opaque, dark circle getting in the way of many things (especially if I close my right eye).  Visited the doctor and I'm told that I have macular degeneration in my right eye and a retina problem in my left eye.  It's surprising because I'm not yet 40.  Doctor said I won't go blind and prescribed me some medicine for an initial treatment.  I'm now looking into treatment options and researching this.  I am supposed to go back to the doctor soon for a checkup.  The dark circle has never left me; in fact, it's now been joined by a transparent, shimmering circle.
I'm not worried about going blind based on the doctor's opinion, but I am concerned that I will have to deal with long-term vision issues.  Currently, I cannot read the text on my screen if I close my right eye, as the dark circle gets in the way of everything.
It left me with an interesting question.  I'd read about blind people working as developers and sysadmins before.  But I never really thought about it, because my vision was so good.  I'm curious now, depending on how bad my eyes get, how would I transition so that I'd be able to continue my chosen profession?  Are there blind developers and sysadmins here who can toss a few resources my way?
Much appreciated to the HN community in advance, thanks.  I'm currently based in Asia, so about to sleep soon, hopefully I'll wake up with a big load of comments to read.  ;) <comment><USER2> Blind software engineer here. Sorry to hear about your eyesight issues, dealing with that is always hard, but the good news is that there is life here. I've been working on a bunch of open source projects and recently I found a full time job as developer. I know almost a dozen blind software developers working in big IT companies. Let me introduce you to the tools you can use. There are basically two types of tools: screen magnifiers for those with low vision and screenreaders for those who don't have any usable vision. Judging by your description, you might want to start with a magnifier. In the unfortunate case if your vision keeps getting worse, you can consider switching to a screenereader. Magnifiers are obviously easier to learn, but you can write code and do all the good stuff with screenreaders too. I am not that familiar with Magnifiers, but I've heard that the most popular one is called ZoomText and it is for Windows. Macs have their own magnifier, not sure about Linux. In the world of screenreaders you have NVDA and JAWS for Windows, VoiceOver for Mac, ORCA for Linux and also EmacsSpeak, which is an accessibility extension for Emacs. You can also use phones with screenreader: there is VoiceOver for iPhone and TalkBack for android. One suggestion is try to find an organisation in your country that deals with blind and low-vision people - ask your eye doctor if he knows any - they might be very useful in your situation as they can recommend a lot of tools and resources specific for your country, such as white cane trainig, if you need it, guide dogs, braille training, they can also probably teach you how to use screenreaders and magnifiers. Feel free to contact me if you have any more questions: anton <dot> malykh <at> gmail. And good luck!

<comment><USER3> Blind developer/sysadmin here as well. I completely agree with the above comment, and would add to it:

I'm not sure what platform you currently use, but if not Windows, you're in for some challenges if you're blind or visually-impaired. I'm currently using Linux because I'm a console-based developer (I mean, I still use Firefox and the GUI but run most dev tools from the console.) This generally works well enough for me until I need an IDE, because my current codebase is C#/CSHTML/JavaScript/HTML/CSS/TypeScript, and I can't juggle all that state in my head without something like an IDE to help out. And, as far as I know, there's nothing like that available and accessible for Linux. My hope is that VSCode can help a bit, but Electron apps are currently inaccessible under Linux, which rules out a whole bunch of traditionally useful tools (No "Electron is bloated" arguments here please, this is something else entirely.) Unless you're a Linux user who uses mostly GTK-Gecko-based tools and the console, and those GTK-based tools don't use crazy custom widgets, you can make Linux work. But QT is challenging, Electron is out, and Chromium/Chrome are inaccessible (though I hear that is changing soon.) Windows offers lots more tooling, plus access to Electron apps, which opens up many more possibilities for non-console-based development.

But anyway, if you can at all transition your workflow to Windows before things get more challenging, I think you'll be in a better place. I'm about to ditch Linux soon, but for a high-end PC which will run VMs for anything I might need. Running a pile of VMs is probably the best solution to this issue, but second best would almost certainly be Windows. MacOS and Linux trail behind, unfortunately.

I also wish you good luck. Happy to chat if I can help more. nolan at thewordnerd dot info

<comment><USER4> I'm a totally blind developer and have never gotten Linux to work very well. What distro do you use? I'm also curious if you run Linux in VM's with speach? I think part of my problem may be bad audio support in Virtualbox and I may have better luck with VMware. I use Windows 10 every day with Jaws and Windows subsystem for Linux. WSL has noticeably increased my productivity compared to Cygwin do to the larger volume of software that runs in it and no longer having the need to spend time compiling tools from source. I find NVDA to be a pretty good screen reader and you could probably use it full time. I've used Jaws for over 20 years though so it's worth paying the $100 a year to keep up to date rather then spending the time getting used to a new screen reader. It's also nice to have a company you can call for support and talk to someone instantly when your entire ability to do your job depends on screen reading software.

<comment><USER3> I use Fedora. Most of my issues seem like potential leaks/performance degradations in the accessibility stack. Performance drops over time, and doesn't seem to improve when apps are killed/restarted. The only components I can't restart are a11y-related, and the only way to get performance back is to restart or log back out and in. Maybe the issue is gnome-shell, but I can't help but feel like there'd be a revolt if everyone experienced the performance issues I do, so unfairly or not I blame accessibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sorry about a bit off-topic and not directly answering your questions but your story resonated with my experience. Maybe it might help you or not :)

I've had surgeries on both my eyes for retinal detachment before I was 22 years old (30ish now). I am now handling myopia of -16 due to bad eyes and post-surgery effects. I don't want to insinuate that you have the same conditions but I dealt with similar symptoms. Sudden loss of vision, dark circles and dark drops passing in the vision is a scary and distraught feeling.

The thought process you describe happened to me as well and is still in- progress. Dealing with the fact that having such issues "early" in life poses questions and anxiety for what might happen later. I kind of navigated over the years with two ways of dealing with this. First as you today with the ideas of pro-active actions to prepare for the day I might go blind: learning braille, using a computer without or very poor sight and thinking about possible career transitions.

I was lucky enough that the surgeries went well and my sight "kind of" stabilized. Over the years I adopted a more "optimistic" approach. Even with a bad start, it is still only a possibility and not a certainty to become blind. I decided to live my life as fully as possible with my current sight and avoid to end-up in a anxiety circle about it. Who knows I might still have my sight for life. And by the time it might deteriorate, technology and medical science will have improve, thus hopefully increasing the chances in treatment, tools and possibilities.

Good luck for everything.

</comment><comment><USER6> I know 'ed' isn't commonly regarded as the peak of accessible interface design, but it occurred to me recently that it was at least designed under the assumption that the user wouldn't be able to see their document, and that retrieving/printing content from the document would be relatively expensive and inconvenient.

I wonder therefore if ed might be a surprisingly accessible editor for users with vision issues, or maybe its a case of users without vision issues simply finding it "no less hellish".

<comment><USER7> See Edbrowse[0] for a web browser and text editor designed with ed user interface principals. It's made by a blind computer user.

[0]: [http://edbrowse.org](http://edbrowse.org)

<comment><USER6> Lovely response, thx.

The philosophy of edbrowse, plus some light computing history, is in a beautiful article linked from that page.

[http://www.eklhad.net/philosophy.html](http://www.eklhad.net/philosophy.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another blind developer chipping in, although most things really have already been said. I have only recently (over the last 4-5 years) started programming professionally, and I have certainly run into my fair share of hurtles along the way. However, by figuring out workarounds or alternatives to inaccessible tools, you can certainly be efficient in this space without using your eyes at all. I have no experience using magnification software as I am fully blind myself, but like others I'd also be more than happy to talk about the little tricks of the trade I've picked up over the years. Feel free to reach out on Twitter or so ( @zersiax ).

<comment><USER9> Sorry, I don't mean to hijack the thread, but I knew some prolific visually- impaired developers in my youth, and never had the wherewithal to ask them questions about their toolchain.

1\. what can we as engineers without visual impairments do to make our work more accessible and easier to collaborate with?

2\. are there tools that you wish existed / could make your life easier, but that would require a significant capital outlay / massive time commitment? of course you're a dev and can "scratch that itch" yourself, but there are only so many hours in the day and you have a day job.

I had a friend who was red-green colorblind who pointed out to me that a lot of the color schemes I was using in my talks were hard for him to quickly understand, and it was (pardon the pun) quite eye-opening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> On a tangent to this, I do 6-8 hours a week "volunteer" work with a friend of mine who is an audio engineer. (It's actually paid work, but I've never raised my price over the past 14 years from when I was 18, so it's essentially just minimum wage/spending money and keeps the relationship professional.)

He uses Windows, Window Eyes and NVDA, Cubase and Mixbus and an absolute _shitload_ of custom-written AutoHotkey macros and C# applications which I've written over the past 10 years.

He's amazingly effective (and for certain workflows, with the help of the macros, far more effective than sighted people) and has recorded, mix and produced a broad range of music.

My point is, it sucks, but there are some incredible people, doing incredible things, who are completely blind.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER11> Hi there, sorry to hear about your sudden vision loss. I'm also visually impaired with a similar condition as yours.

I'm also a software developer, mainly using Visual Studio, and I use the Windows Magnifier in docked mode at the top of the screen.

My usable vision in my left (bad) eye, is similar to looking through a frosted glass pane, my right eye is better and allows me to use a pc as long as I zoom in on things.

Some things or adjustments I have made:

1) At work and at home I use a 27" 4K monitor. This is so that I can zoom in on things without it becoming terribly blurry. You could go bigger than this, say like a 40", but I've never tried it.

2) I also often wear sunglasses in the office to block some glare from ambient light and from the screen. This dims things quite a bit, but you get used to it. I can touch type, but mostly only the letters on the keyboard, so I sometimes struggle with the punctuation or programming symbols while I have the sunglasses on. I guess I could get a keyboard with backlit keys.

3) At home I use Safari's Reader mode A LOT, this helps reduce clutter, and allows me to zoom text automatically to a standard font and size. I always joke by saying I wish the web would go back to black on white html :)

4) I take a daily vitamin called Ocuvite, formulated with Lutein.

As for day to day development tasks, it's not that bad, however, it's important that you make your condition aware to your colleagues, so that they can understand and accommodate you. Whenever I go over to someones desk to look at something on their PC, they will almost always zoom in for me to see.

During meetings or presentations, I stand right up against the side of the TV or projector screen.

At the risk of rambling on too much, I hope you find what works for you!

Cheers

<comment><USER11> Sorry, I forgot to mention you should watch this video by Abrar Sheikh: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3WpnG49XLc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3WpnG49XLc)

What he's achieved is quite impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There was a discussion about this a while back at a Tetra Society meeting; [http://www.tetrasociety.org/](http://www.tetrasociety.org/).

One idea I thought promising was audio games and household assistance delivered through devices like Google Home and Amazon Echo. They could be programmed and controlled though a natural-language API like Inform7, which is used for interactive fiction.

I do not know of any working tools for developing these, but I heard of a BBC experiment called "The Inspection Chamber" that allows playing audio games solely through voice. There is an article at [https://www.bbc.co.uk/taster/pilots/inspection- chamber](https://www.bbc.co.uk/taster/pilots/inspection-chamber)

</comment><comment><USER13> apologies if the non-software related comment is unwelcome.

I know some people who were afflicted by macular degeneration at a younger ago. They speak positively about supplements that contain all three of lutein, zeaxanthin and meso-zeaxanthin[1]; which have shown some solid results[2] in slowing down progress of dry MD & preventing its progress to wet MD.

Wising you the very best of luck managing this!

1\. Macushield or Macushield Gold (AREDS formula) [https://www.macushield.com/](https://www.macushield.com/) 2\. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4963902/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4963902/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I worked with a blind software engineer for quite some time. He's tweeted a little bit about it in the past[1], he's also one of my favourite people I've worked with, he's incredibly kind and I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you reached out. Wishing you well.

[1] [https://twitter.com/ezufelt/status/1003070722879651840](https://twitter.com/ezufelt/status/1003070722879651840)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone, HN rocks as usual. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> This is a pretty broad topic, and many people have spent their lives working in the digital inclusion and accessibility space, so I don't mean for this to even remotely be exhaustive, but at a high-level, I can offer some thoughts that may be of help.

Let's consider two groups for now, though there are many others. Folks who are blind or have pretty impaired vision and then those who have some usable vision. For those of us who are blind or mostly blind, we use speech and Braille to interact with technology instead of a visual user interface (UI). The program that translates the UI into speech/braille is typically a screenreader. On Windows, the two popular screenreaders are Jaws and NVDA. Jaws is proprietary, costing upwards of $1K to $1.5K depending on add-ons, etc., and was widely considered the best game in town for the longest time. around 11 years ago, two blind guys out of Australia, Mik and Jamie (Jamie now works for Mozilla), rightfully thought it was ridiculous that an already disadvantaged audience should have to pay more than what most folks pay for their computers to access them, and so they worked on the free and open source NVDA screenreader , which stands for non-visual desktop access. Anyways, on Mac, there's the built-In VoiceOver screenreader from Apple, though the mobile instantiation of this screenreader, the one that is built into every single IOS, WatchOs, and TVOS device tends to be superior to its desktop counterpart, which is suboptimal wen it comes to surfing the web, interacting with programs, etc. in my and others' opinion.

For our second group, there's screen enlargement. Hell, back in the DOS days, I would have my nose on the glass of the CRT monitor to read the text, which I enlarged a bit because my brother showed me the 'mode 40' command which did 40 lines per screen instead of 80, thereby doubling the height of characters and at that time, making them readable to me. Now, I rely purely on screenreading- based approaches. Programs like the magnifier built into Windows and Mac, ZoomText, and others exist to enlarge the contents of the display, change foreground and background colors far past OS capabilities, offer auto-panning and focus-tracking, and generally act as you would expect a smart magnifying glass to behave. Again, shout out to Apple here: all of their devices have this feature built-in.

So, in Linux land, we've got the Orca screenreader. Joanie has done a truly incredible job managing that project and the volunteer community is awesome, but it's not anywhere near as resourced as NVDA, for example. Therefore, I consider Orca a labor of love and the best tool around for accessing the Gnome desktop, but it's not as fully-featured as NVDA, Jaws, etc. again IMHO. On Linux natively, there is also the SpeakUp screen reader, which patches directly into the kernel and intercepts input/output buffers. SpeakUp has the advantage of getting you speech earlier to boot-time, and it supported/supports a myriad of hardware synthesizers, which is still a big deal for a subset of screenreading users. It does not work in GUI environments though. I'd be remiss if I did not point out Emacspeak, though it is a self- voicing Emacs environment with all the advantages and disadvantages therein. Gnome, and maybe KDE?, also has magnification, but it's been a little while since I've played with this, so not sure if it's just using magnification primitives of basic video card driver stuff, actually manipulating underlying windowing primitives, etc.

So, I know that's a ton of background/lead-in, and I apologize, but I just wanted to contextualize some of these answers. Also, note that I'm leaving out a solid 90% of things.

For sys-admin stuff, back when I did a lot more of it, I would use my windows laptop and then ssh to access an army of machines running various operating systems, mostly Linux. I would write scripts in Perl, later Python, to automate things for me, as most sysadmins do. I would usually find a way to edit on my Windows PC, and then transfer the files to the right place. Over the years, this has seen me explore everything from samba shares, SFTP-mapped drives, two terminals open with an up-arrow of an scp command prepped to go, shared drives with multiple OS environments accessing it like in the case of VMWare mirroring out a disk, etc. etc. The reason for this is that editing on Windows tends to be far more accessible than relying on the interplay of nano or vi within an ssh window. Don't get me wrong, if I need to dip in an change a hosts file, quickly edit an nginx config, go modify a crontab entry, whatever ... those are doable with a nano or vi invocation in my ssh window, but for more complex editing (think back to going through all the lines of php.ini or making sure fstab is all good, etc.) then I would bring the file to windows, edit and send back. Yes, this is as annoying as it sounds, and I used to be a wizard at fromdos and the tofrodos tools, etc.

Anything web-based is of course froth with whether or not its accessible. Hell, HN isn't exactly great in this space, having some truly avoidable and bad web accessibility (just saying ... would take less than a day to make this website so much easier to use with a screen reader). For what I mean by web accessibility, take a look at the WCAG 2.1 by the W3C. I'll put links at the bottom of this message for as many things as I can think of. I mention web accessibility, though, because of tools like PhpMyAdmin, SQLBuddy, the web interface on routers and switches and PDUs, etc. There again, I like Ubiquiti products for example, since I can ssh into them and go to town.

Other sysadmin tasks involve things like port scanning, network traffic capture, setting up permissions, installing applications, etc., which are all done in similar ways, but it's the "how" that's different, not the "what", if that makes sense. I use nmap just like you for port scanning, but I may do stuff like redirect the output to a file that's growing and then use notepad or wordpad to consume that file as it grows, or 'tail -f ' it with greps sprinkled into the pipe chain just to make it less noisy.

Speaking of output being noisy, conventions matter, right? So, for example, imagine parsing a web access log with speech. You can visually just gloss over the timestamp and host information to get the crux of what you want to look for, but I have to listened to most/all of that content to get to what I want. To this end, I would either specify different format strings to put important information up front on the line, but then I've got non-standard logs, or do creative things with awk/gawk/perl one-liners, etc.

I feel this has turned more into high-level thoughts and less tools, so maybe I should end with apologizing that I'm not sure I even remotely answered your question, but felt this info could add some context to the discussion. If you are looking for highly specific strategies and targeted solutions, I would be happy to speak with you one-on-one over email, voice, etc. I believe strongly in paying things forward, and there have been many folks who have helped me along the way.

Fun fact, I wrote this in Outlook's new email window, spell-checked it a bit, and then pasted it into HN's edit field. Something that may seem totally weird, but a type of computer interaction I don't even think about anymore, even though it's probably quite different than how most folks use various applications, web or otherwise. The reason for this is that the affordances of web edit fields, even when some accessibility has been taken into account, are minimal in comparison to far more accessible interactions like the new message window of Outlook.

Some links:

WCAG 2.1 [https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/)

orca Screenreader [https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/](https://help.gnome.org/users/orca/stable/)

NVDA Screenreader [https://www.nvaccess.org/about- nvda/](https://www.nvaccess.org/about-nvda/)

speakup Project: [http://www.linux-speakup.org/](http://www.linux- speakup.org/)

JAWS Screenreader: [https://www.freedomscientific.com/Products/Blindness/JAWS](https://www.freedomscientific.com/Products/Blindness/JAWS)

zoomtext Magnifier: [https://www.zoomtext.com/](https://www.zoomtext.com/)

emacspeak [http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/](http://emacspeak.sourceforge.net/)

cheers, and I do wish you all the best with your vision. Thank you for asking this question on HN. I hope others contribute to the conversation and this gets some increased awareness.

<comment><USER3> Man, I feel like half this post was my sysadmin playbook. I eventually got sick of explaining why it was such a pain in the ass to crack open vim and edit remote files, and why it was much easier to edit locally and scp back. I credit interactive fiction for the problem-solving skills, and gopher for the boost to memorization (gopher because if you wanted to find that primitive search engine 12 levels deep, you had to memorize lots of strings of numbers to navigate those mazes of menus. Not much different than how we use appliances these days, really, though it's hell to manage if you're stoned or not 100% on your game. :)

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I hear you. Honestly the smart-home/IOT movement has been very beneficial, not because of the sorry excuses for automation being sold right now, but because it enforces a certain level of pre-2005-web-like openness. I knew all the file system structures and specific web paths back in the day because it was just necessary to memorize it and easy to access things if you had specifics, whereas now everything is cryptographic strings, super long addresses like IP V6 ones, and based on dynamic interactions so that deep URLs are pretty much worthless to memorize except maybe on sites like GitHub, where the pattern is reasonable. The reason for my comment on smart-home stuff bringing back some of this openness is only that at least now there's a backdoor, so to speak. When a microwave doesn't talk and also has very little tactile differentiation on the buttons, at least you can use your Google Home or Amazon Alexa to tell that thing to warm up a plate for 3 minutes. Same goes for toaster ovens, rice cookers, water boilers, Sous Vide circulators, thermostats, locks, lights, etc. Yet another of the countless examples of why having things be open and have an API makes it better for absolutely everyone, especially since it facilitates use cases not able to be foreseen at inception. And, yes I do believe all of that can be done in a secure and sensible way. No need for security to be antithetical to inclusion, which is a pretty popular misconception.

Speaking of whacky stuff to do to access Linux and text editing, I remember back wen Jaws and even NVDA had far worse cursor tracking in the Windows CMD window, so you couldn't be sure that when your screen reader said it was beside a certain character, that it actually was. This is something I argue no sighted user of a computer has probably ever had to deal with, and never for a duration of years. So what I would do is I would type 'z' and then route the screenreader's secondary cursor to make sure that the 'z' I added was added where it would/should have been, if my cursor was in fact where the screen reader said. Just imagine needing to text edit where you can't even trust the position of the system caret .... fun times!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This Ask showed up on a Google Group I happen to co-own called Blind Dev Works. So far, it's been very low traffic, but it is a resource that already exists intended to support the needs of blind developers.

You and any other blind developers here (or potential allies) are welcome to join. Just send a join request. I'll approve it.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/blind-dev- works](https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/blind-dev-works)

(I'm visually impaired, but not blind. I'm not really a programmer either, though I still hope to be one someday.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll join soon, depending on my prognosis. Hope it's not bad to say this, but prefer to not join too many things to limit the volume of emails going into my inbox! :)

<comment><USER16> Whatever works for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Check out the resources at [http://benetech.org](http://benetech.org) for blind and vision impaired people. Benetech is located in Palo Alto, CA USA. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benetech](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benetech)

</comment><comment><USER18> Considering vision problems: I wonder if VR headsets could be hacked to be a useful screen-magnifier. The screen would not necessarily be represented like a big movie screen, but you could move around the screen using head motions. Not sure about the ergonomics of this, but it might work better than solutions on standard computer screens.

<comment><USER19> I have a strong vision impairment and have tried this when Occulus first came out. I found the lag not good and became no longer interested in this problem. There are a few vendors working in this space whose hardware is slowly getting better ...

[https://www.esighteyewear.com/technology](https://www.esighteyewear.com/technology)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You may find this previous item about a blind developer using Visual(!) Studio interesting: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14347908](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14347908)

</comment><comment><USER21> Read up on how blue light + retinal can knock out photoreceptor cells. Especially in your 50s and 60s. When your immune system goes downhill. You can reduce the amount of blue light on your smartphones and monitors.

</comment><comment><USER22> A very interesting thread about this on HN recently:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18414562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18414562)

<comment><USER23> Parent link is: (Ask HN: How should a programming language accommodate disabled programmers?)

And another related thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18478776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18478776) (Ask HN: Blind programmers, what can I do to make my code easier for you?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> One more resource for visually impaired developers is email@example.com</comment>


Previously Downloaded OS X Installers No Longer Work - <AUTHOR> http://tidbits.com/article/16302 <comment><USER2> I was bitten by this this week. Tried to reuse my installer to install OS X El Capitan on a MBP without redownloading it over my super-fast 2Mbps internet connection.

First, I try to install it by just copying the installer app - "can't be verified".

Then I make a bootable USB stick using DiskMaker X - "can't be verified". I run an integrity check on the installer - all good.

I then try running `/path/to/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/USB-STICK --applicationpath /path/to/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app --nointeraction` - "can't be verified".

Finally I give up and the system is installed via the App Store. The download fails once, it finally completes, and I am left clueless as to why I couldn't reuse the old installer.

An "expired certificate" error message would have saved me many hours. It's unfortunate for the user that Apple puts so little emphasis on letting them be their own tech support.

<comment><USER3> Apple is just awful about providing meaningful, useful errors. The worst is AirPlay. When it fails to connect, which is about 33% of the time, there's nothing. It doesn't even pop up a generic alert, it just silently (or not so silently, if you're playing music) reverts to local playback.

Many other examples abound. Most errors at least provide a message, but one so generic as to be useless.

<comment><USER4> or TimeMachine

"sparsebundle already in use" is the FOAD of error messages. I do love how the (now stale) tools to fix this are maintained by a volunteer on an external site unrelated to apple.

I try not to be too grumpy about it, but I paid $3k for a laptop _not_ to have to fucking deal with windows-style normal operation of the OS and related tools is busted and you're gonna sink hours into debugging it. And least when linux breaks it tends to leave error messages and details in syslog...

<comment><USER5> I switched from OSX Yosemite to Windows 8.1 a while back.

I have had _substantially_ fewer problems with Windows 8.1.

<comment><USER6> Just yesterday I performed a clean install of Windows 10 on my desktop work computer. After joining our domain (configured in the most standard way possible), the start menu stopped working and edge couldn't start anymore. All commands to fix this situation (through powershell) gave cryptic hexadecimal error codes. After a few hours it turns out the Windows Firewall service was disabled. How this causes the Start Menu to malfunction, I don't know...

Again this was a _clean_ installation. Windows 10 is a joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had a handful of apps I use all the time stop working entirely about a week ago. They were purchased from the App Store but are no longer in the App Store. I am furious. I am willing to bet the expired certificate is the culprit.

I've had to carefully maintain the .app's myself across a couple Mac's as Apple stopped letting you download things that are no longer in the store. Now they just don't work at all.

The older I get the more I think maybe Richard Stallman isn't crazy.

<comment><USER8> Let's not forget it's not exactly Apple's fault that some developers remove their apps from the App Store. While it's annoying, and we can wish all we want that Apple would make apps permanently available once downloaded, it's really the developer of the app that has failed you, not Apple.

<comment><USER9> No, I'm pretty sure it's Apple's DRM that got us into this mess.

<comment><USER10> As far as I understand (but I have only distributed an OS X app outside the App store), the DRM is opt-in.

App store guidelines require that packages are sandboxed and signed. If you have a signed application, you can circumvent the signature check by disabling gatekeeper, removing the quarantine attribute, or control-clicking and choosing 'Open'.

The DRM mechanism is called 'receipt validation' and has to be enabled by the app developer:

[https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/releasenotes/General...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/releasenotes/General/ValidateAppStoreReceipt/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40010573)

I can sort of see why Apple provides this (to entice companies to publish in the app store), but a developed can decide to be customer-friendly and not check the receipt. So, I think it's fair to blame the developer, not Apple.

(Please correct me if I am wrong, as said, I never distributed an App Store app.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Under windows, when I sign a binary, I also have the option (well - it's more like a strong recommendation) to time-stamp the signature.

That way, windows can check whether the signature was made during a time when the certificate was valid. This means that when your certificate expires, you won't be able to sign new binaries, but at least the existing ones continue to work.

This is something Apple should really consider implementing - even just for the sake of archival of old OS versions that people might still want to install for nostalgias sake.

<comment><USER12> How does this help? In order to provide any security you would need to limit the time from signing, which would be very similar to just issuing the certificate for that much longer. There is no way to verify that the binary was actually signed at that time.

<comment><USER13> It uses trusted timestamping servers run by certificate authorities to sign the timestamp information.

<comment><USER12> Ok, I didn't realize that. But it still doesn't solve the problem of compromising an old certificate and creating a fake signature with your own time.

<comment><USER14> Expired and compromised are two different things. If compromised, it will be published in a CRL with a reason flag.

<comment><USER12> The reason why certificates expire is because they will become easy to crack as computers get faster. So this would effectively be removing the expiry date. Now you can crack any old certificate and sign things claiming that you did it before the certificate expired.

<comment><USER15> As someone above has already said.

To do this, you'd need to compromise or convince a trusted timestamping authority to sign your signing request with an old date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not familiar with actual Macs, but I did install OS X plenty of times on PCs. Can't you just change time on your machine, install it and then change it back? I'm sure OS X can be installed offline.

<comment><USER17> The article mentions this as a solution, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Apple has been getting sloppier and sloppier over the past 5 years or so. For instance, even if you have selected "automatically set my timezone based on my location", it won't update unless you actually open the date/time preferences panel every time you change zones.

<comment><USER19> Really? I flew west coast to east coast yesterday and the time on my machine updated with no manual intervention.

<comment><USER20> Worked fine for me going from NL > UK yesterday. Yosemite.

<comment><USER21> Works for me probably 8-10 times per month going between time zones. Now Flux... that never realises...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > There is one caveat to all this. Apple won't allow a newer Mac to download > versions of OS X that aren't compatible with that Mac, so on a 27-inch iMac > with Retina display, for instance, the App Store app refuses to let you > download Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

It's an edge case, but it's still annoying that I can't do this. What if I'm trying to get a non-functional older Mac running again? Stopping all users from doing this does mitigate incompatibility support issues, but it hobbles power users.

To allow this, I don't think they need to add a switch to preferences. I'd be happy with a defaults invocation.

<comment><USER23> There's a reason: Lion didn't have drivers for the hardware in question. OS X has all drivers, like for graphics etc. built in. That's why you're limited to versions after you Mac was made.

<comment><USER22> Sorry, I didn't explain myself well enough. What if I want to download a specific image on a different Mac to the one I want to install the OS on?

<comment><USER23> Oh sorry. Hmm that's troublesome. I wonder how far back this goes. Apparently just setting your clock back bypasses the check!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> All of this is just more evidence driving me away from using any kind of app store. I download and install apks on my android phone, and executable/tar installers on my computers. It's also the reason why I'll never buy an iOS device, or even open the Windows 10 store.

<comment><USER25> The best app stores are the ones beginning with apt-get, yum, slapt-get etc. I'd very much like to see a real Linux/Unix phone with a battery that isn't a joke being played on consumers. I'm tired of looking after an smartphone that requires as much care and time as a small child.

<comment><USER11> _> The best app stores are the ones beginning with apt-get, yum, slapt-get etc_

At least apt is as pissy about expired GPG keys as MacOS is about expired code signing certificates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The whole "old installer" and "bootable disk" has been a pain-point since 10.8 for me. I have done 4 or 5 clean installs for friends in the last 6 months, and I tried to make a 10.10 or 10.11 bootable USB... no go - each time, a new issue.

I have ended up every time using my older 10.8 (ML) install USB every time, then just firing off the free App Store upgrade to 10.11.

<comment> X-Istence In newer Mac's (2012 onward IIRC) you can just boot into a net installer, and it goes and fetches the installer from the internet before re-installing.

<comment><USER26> The main reason I don't do this is because I'm often installing the OS to a brand new (blank) drive that has absolutely no recovery on it.

<comment> X-Istence It is part of the ROM. It can be done with a blank drive.

[http://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/20/internet-recovery- lets-n...](http://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/20/internet-recovery-lets-new- macs-install-os-x-from-blank-hard-drive/)

So the drive doesn't even have recovery on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It kinda seems like Apple has set out to prove that having a release schedule that is date and feature driven at the same time is not a good idea.

<comment><USER28> This is not related to their release schedule, it has to do with the certificates used to validate software. You can view an explanation of application level code signing here [0] and the concepts also apply to signing OS images.

[0] [https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Securi...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Security/Conceptual/CodeSigningGuide/AboutCS/AboutCS.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40005929-CH3-SW3)

<comment><USER3> I believe they're saying that it is related to Apple's release schedule because having a hard deadline every year _and_ a fixed feature set for that hard deadline means that you run into problems with quality.

I would dearly love for Apple to take a year or two (or, hell, five, I'm happy with the current feature set) and just fix bugs. No new features, just bugs. Do another Snow Leopard release, or three.

<comment><USER4> I have a cron script that hard kills finder hourly because it eats a gig of ram and gets slower and slower until there is typing lag in it

My partner's itunes refuses to reliably see her iphone.

TimeMachine shits the bed on the regular.

SMB appears to be the future but TimeMachine still requires brittle afp.

On a 15-in late 2013 laptop with 10.10.current, about once out of every 20 times I open the lid the laptop doesn't wake up. Even when it does wake up there is a black screen for a noticeable amount of time. This never used to happen on 10.9.

Apps regularly lose the ability to create audio (spotify, chrome, vlc) if you let them run too long. The solution is to sudo killall audiod.

etc etc etc

<comment><USER29> [http://bugreport.apple.com/](http://bugreport.apple.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The article noted that one workaround for people in the middle of an install just to change the date. Is this a general workaround: change the date pre- February 2016, run installer, change date back?

</comment><comment><USER31> This is not a problem we ever had with installers on CDs...

Seriously Apple, stop making it so goddamned difficult to use your software!!

</comment><comment><USER32> I should do this when I get a chance. Good to know. Glad I have a external Hd to store it on

</comment><comment><USER33> Apple is really killing me with this shit. They're not making anything more secure, they're just making bitrot worse and being a pain in the ass. People need to install and run programs, please.

</comment><comment><USER34> Completely by-the-by, but I couldn't help but notice the small advertisement at the bottom for Smile PDFPen[0]. I'm using uBlock Origin, but this wasn't blocked by it, presumably because it's unique to this site, and is indistinguishable from the rest of the content. However, it's very unobtrusive, doesn't track me at all and has no influence on the actual content of the article, so I have no problems with it being here.

This makes me wonder if there could be a set of guidelines that could be formulated for acceptable advertising on websites...?

[0][https://imgur.com/pQIFQFb](https://imgur.com/pQIFQFb)

<comment><USER35> Adam Engst, publisher of TidBITS here... Thanks for noticing that Smile is sponsoring TidBITS. As you note, the sponsorship is unique to our site, and uses entirely internal systems for display, so there are no trackers or the like. Smile chose to do their URL via a URL shortener, so I don't know what could be determined if you click it, but it's not loading any code merely by viewing it. The trackers the other commenter saw are due to the graphical ads and affiliate link generators we also have on the page.

Two random facts to note. First, as far as I know, TidBITS did the first sponsorship program for Internet content back in 1992. If that was in any way responsible for what Internet advertising has become, I apologize. :-) Since we believe in archival content, you can read that article at [http://tidbits.com/article/2995](http://tidbits.com/article/2995)

Second, our primary source of revenue is voluntary memberships. We also make about $5K per year from graphical ads, and in last year's membership drive, I challenged the 90% of our readers who are not members to join, promising that we'd drop the graphical ads and affiliate link generators if we could raise another $5K. Alas, the challenge fell short. [http://tidbits.com/article/16234](http://tidbits.com/article/16234)</comment></comment>


Vivaldi Browser for Power Users Hits 1.0 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/05/vivaldi-browser-hits-1-0/ <comment><USER2> Announcement: [https://vivaldi.com/press/2016-04-06-Vivaldi-1_goes_final/](https://vivaldi.com/press/2016-04-06-Vivaldi-1_goes_final/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have been using the browser for about 3 months now. It is by far my favorite browser for all the flexibility it affords and options. Love that I can use Chrome Extensions.</comment>