OS X and Powerbooks make life easier on the eyes

My wife’s been giving me the stink-eye lately at seeing me basking in the electroluminescent glow of my 17-inch PowerBook G4. Finally, after several silent passes, she stopped and signaled that a lesson was about to ensue. I sat, expecting a lecture about how I’m always on my computer. I’ll tell you exactly what she said, and I quote: “I’m still using a PC. How could you let that happen?”

How, indeed.

She dressed me down for the fact that I’ve spoken at length here about the ways in which OS X excels. I study it, I say it, but apparently it’s time to really bring it home. That computers should be useful to users of all ages, skills, and abilities, right out of the box, is one of my major causes.

Color profiles are vital to all users because they determine the maximum usable resolution of the display, the optimal working distance from the display, the minimum readable text size, and the duration of uninterrupted work possible without eye strain.

From where I sit, you cannot meaningfully adjust your system’s color profile from Windows’ themes or the game image-tweaking utility that came with your video card. OS X has a custom color profile tool that matches your display to your vision, not by laying out a bunch of knobs and buttons to fiddle with, but by showing a sequence of simple images and running something like an optometrist’s process of switching lenses and saying “is this better or worse?”

You don’t need to know what any step in OS X’s profile definition process does, but when you finish creating your Mac’s custom color profile, you will feel like you’re working with a new monitor and a fresh set of eyeballs.

I use an iSight camera on a gooseneck as a magnifier for detail work on electronics projects, with the benefit of recording as I go so I can see where I screwed up.

I didn’t stop to think that the same approach might work great for my wife with small printed type, perhaps better than scanning and printing. I use VoiceOver to read and type confidential material in-flight, leaving my PowerBook’s screen turned off, but I’ve never demonstrated it for my wife. Indeed, all of Tiger’s intentional and accidental Universal Access features are incredibly useful even to those who can see, hear, and move just fine. I use nearly all of them, and I can say that I’ve come to need them, not to compensate for age or acuity, but to make my computer communicate with me on terms that are closer to my own.

For my wife, large print isn’t, and bright desk lamps aren’t, so reading, writing, studying, scheduling, jotting, conversing, shopping, pretty much everything that requires near vision, she does at her PC.

She has taken pains to craft a workable environment in Windows, meticulously selecting themes and fonts and colors that best suit her vision and her routine. But even with her best efforts, which I challenge anyone to better, she still has to lean into her monitor and she frequently dons reading glasses over her contacts to read what’s on her 21-inch display. I see this leaning and squinting every day and think, “nothing can stop this woman, but gosh, it’s too bad she can’t see better than that.”

Dope. She does see better than that. She just can’t see Windows any better than she does without “enhancing” her software and equipment.