iPhone 6 Plus: First Opinions

I have had an iPhone 6 Plus for almost ttwo weeks now. It has been a fun time. As you may have guessed I am very happy with my Apple experience.

Here is some background: I only bought my first Apple product an iPad Air in June. Having been shown some of the things that Apple phones and tablets can do by a great guy at Guide Dogs for the Blind. He is a fellow guide dog user, he actually has Leif, my guide dog's, half sister and most importantly he is a programmer at Apple in Cupertino. So he knows his stuff about the product and how to use them.

I had been looking to buy a new phone for a while and when I heard of the new iPhone 6 I decided to wait until they were released and then buy an old "reduced price 5's." but the 5's did not come down in price and a 6 Plus was only $100 more to purchase on my current phone plan. So I waited almost two months for the iPhone 6 Plus to be in a store at the right time.

I had limited choice of color, only silver were available at the store but since I am blind and I was going to buy a case anyway. Why bother about colors for the phone.

The phone was set up to take my fingerprint to allow it to work. You also need to set up an unlock code at the same time in order to act as a back-up if the fingerprint system fails. This was good for me as the case I bought means I can't use the fingerprint scan very easily. Fat fingers don't make contact as easily it seems.

Siri, the built in assistant now works if the phone is charging, you can say "Hey Siri!" and Siri activates to do your bidding.

I use Siri to check my stock portfolio, help me call numbers from my contact list and send text messages.  Siri will also read me texts (the last text received) or will tell me what e-mails I have received.

I also like that I can say to Siri, call 571 XXX 1234 when a phone  number is not in my contacts and Siri will dial the number for me. That is a great deal easier than trying to fiddle with a piece of paper trying to read a number, trying to dial in a number as you do so with fingers that hit two numbers at one time. That was sometimes the situation with my old phone/

Siri's voice is clear,  I personally prefer the male voices which are easily changeable in the settings area. I haven't tried Voice Over on the iPhone yet. Just not had time to play around with that function yet, but if it is as good as on the iPad Air there will be few complaints.

So in all after two weeks I am happy with a phone that I can use and functions that are now easily available.

I will keep you posted as I learn more iPhone tricks. Until then maybe you should take a look at this book :

Walking Through Molasses

Do you ever feel sometimes that you are walking through molasses to get to a goal?

Recently I have felt just that way. Every step forward in recent weeks seems to be at such an effort it hardly seems that I am making progress.

In the summer I made attempts to get the training that I missed out on when I first went blind five years ago. Training in using adaptive technology, training in just living, cooking, organizing. What I now have is a series of ad hoc skills thaat I put together for myself, re-inventing the wheel at every problem.

Anyway earlier this summer I learned that there was no need for that, there are teachers out there to assess and train you and I for those problems. The only problem.

We have to be introduced. We cannot access them ourselves. Civil Servants have to introduce us and agree to pay for the services.

Civil Servant bereaucrats who are the molasses at our feet.

After six months now. I have had an assessment for independent living skilss, a low vision assessment and am waiting on a  workplace assessment.

The low vision test has already bourne fruit, I go to collect some eye glasses on Monday.

The independent living skills has led to an interview and they are recommending actions.

The workplace assessment has been postponed twice by either the assessing agency or my employer.

It is just so frustrating that after five years of inaction and ignoring my requests for help, that now the powers that be just continue to slow down every possible movement forward.

Maybe instead of embedding our feet in the molasses of bureaucracy they should just hang us from our feet and drown us in the damn stuff,