Greg Gehr’s Family Blog

Eleven days ago, I send an "Open Letter to Apple" regarding the "motion sickness" symptoms that I was experiencing due to my upgrade to iOS 7.  I sent this letter to the known email address for Tim Cook, and to accessibility@apple.com.

I actually received a response.  While, what I am assuming is a canned response from Apple, told me to change all the settings I indicated I had already changed in my initial letter to Apple, I still was pleased to hear them state that:

"Apple is aware that some users may need additional motion control options. We do appreciate your feedback and will forward this information on to the appropriate people for review."

This is GREAT NEWS.  Apple has acknowledged the problem, and indicated that they are reviewing what else they can do to assist people like me!  This is truly great customer support and wonderful news!  Even though I still am getting a little nauseous when I use my phone, it helps me in dealing with it to know that some team at Apple is considering what to do to make it better!  

Thank you Apple!

Greg Gehr

_________________________________________

COPY OF EMAIL SENT TO ME BY APPLE:

Begin forwarded message:

From: Apple Accessibility <accessibility@apple.com>

Subject: [417739] An Open Letter to Apple

Date: October 4, 2013 12:30:33 PM PDT

To: #####@mac.com (My personal email is removed to prevent "spamming"  If you want to contact me, tweet me @GregGehr)

Reply-To: Apple Accessibility <accessibility@apple.com>

Hello,

Thank you for writing to Apple.  At this time we want to ensure that you are aware of the current options to help reduce motion in iOS 7. 

If you have an iPhone 5, iPhone 5s or iPhone 5c, you can Reduce Motion, which turns off Parallax and limits the animations of other apps and icon badges, by going to Settings > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion. 

Additionally, you can Increase Contrast and enable Bold Text - some users have informed us that that has helped them reduce the perception of motion they encounter in iOS 7.

Apple is aware that some users may need additional motion control options. We do appreciate your feedback and will forward this information on to the appropriate people for review. 

At this time, we cannot comment on when a possible solution will be made available. 

Apple Accessibility

Please also visit our sites

http://www.apple.com/accessibility/
http://www.apple.com/support/accessibility/

_____________________________________________

11/21/13 - Update #1: The 7.03 update to iOS 7 provides significant relief from the aspects of the iOS system that were causing my distress.  I have the following settings under Settings>General>Accessability:

Bold Text ON

Reduce Motion ON

These settings provide less animations (with Reduce Motion on, most animations change to "fades") and larger type that does not seem to "vibrate"

THANKS APPLE!

The following Letter has been sent to "Apple Feedback" at http://www.apple.com/feedback/ as well as being emailed to accessibility@apple.com and tcook@apple.com

__________________________

Dear Apple

I am experiencing a problem with iOS 7. Specifically, the thin lines (text and objects), parallax motion, and aggressively swooping animations are causing me nausea, similar to feeling "car sick."

I have turned on "REDUCE MOTION" to cut down on the parallax effect, which helps. I have reduced the brightness. I have turned on "bold" for my font preference in accessibility to help with the overly thin "vibrating" fonts on the screen, again, this provided some relief, but the interface is still full of objects that are composed of lines that are simply too thin, and there is way too much unnecessary motion.

Despite all the changes, I am still experiencing nausea when using my phone with iOS 7 due to the aggressive swooping animations throughout the system. My phone is a 4S, which I have had for two years, and this issue stared with the upgrade to iOS 7, it never occurred before that. I also had a 3GS for two years before that, no problem with nausea there either.

I went to research the issue, and have been finding similar reports that many many other people are having issues with this on twitter and in the blogs.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5322295

http://www.stuff.tv/apple/ios-7s-motions-effects-are-triggering-vertigo-and-nausea-symptoms/news

I am writing to ask that that you consider prioritizing an update that allows us to scale back or turn off the unnecessary animations, similar to the preference that allows me to turn off the "genie" effect in the dock of an OS X Macintosh.

Thank you for listening.

Greg Gehr

These are two original songs by Chris Martinez of Darien Gap.  These are live acoustic solo recordings done at my home in July of 2013 with my Tascam DR100mkII and a Shure 57/58 mic combo, using a Behringer mixer and mic preamps.  They have been compressed into 192k mp3 files and uploaded to Posthaven.

(copyright 2013, Chris Martinez)

(updated, see end of post)

My kid is turning 7 years old soon, and they have decided to ask all their friends to help them do something different for their birthday.  They are starting a donation drive for the local Animal Shelter.  I am very proud of their idea and wanted to share it with you.

Jay's bedroom is full up on toys and games, so we asked what they wanted to do instead. Earlier this year, our next door neighbor adopted this handsome dog Django Reinhardt from the shelter. Also, Jay and Susan recently visited the shelter to donate old towels and meet the animals. So, instead of giving them a present for their birthday, they're asking for their friends to help in putting together a big care package for the dogs and cats at the Humboldt County Animal Shelter.

The shelter says that they can always use the following items:

• Cat treats

• Dog treats

• Canned food (no dry food, please)

• Cat toys

• Dog toys

• Peanut butter to put in KONG toys for dogs

• Used blankets

• Used towels

• Donations to the shelter's emergency medical fund  (make checks payable to Friends for Life Animal Rescue and send them to PO Box 962 Eureka, CA 95502 or donate online at www.dogrescuers.org)

Update #1

The donation drive for the local Animal Shelter was a great success!  Here is a photo of Jay with all the great items that were donated at their party. In addition to what you see in the picture, there is a whole bin of towels, and $50 in cash! 

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is the law under which Aaron Swartz and other innovators and activists have been threatened with decades in prison. The CFAA is so broad that law enforcement says it criminalizes all sorts of mundane Internet use: Potentially even breaking a website's fine print terms of service agreement. Don't set up a Myspace page for your cat. Don't fudge your height on a dating site. Don't share your Facebook password with anybody: You could be committing a federal crime. (Read more here.)

It's the vagueness and over breadth of this law that allows prosecutors to go after people like Aaron Swartz, who tragically committed suicide earlier this year. The government threatened to jail him for decades for downloading academic articles from the website JSTOR.

Since Aaron's death, activists have cried out for reform of the CFAA. But members of the House Judiciary Committee are actually floating a proposal to expand and strengthen it -- that could come up for a vote as soon as April 10th! (Read more here.)

• Join the DEMAND FOR JUSTICE. 
• Put a banner on your website. 
• Call or write your representative today!

UPDATE AT END OF POST

I took my car to Mid City Motor World (between Arcata and Eureka) this morning to have the oil changed and some other minor maintenance completed.  I have been buying Honda's from Mid City, and having my cars serviced at Mid City, for many many years and I highly recommend their sales and service. I feel that they are a very customer-oriented business. 

They also offer a lot of nice amenities for customers waiting in the lobby. There is real coffee, ground from fresh beans, real cream for the coffee, fresh bagels with cream cheese (they need a toaster), tables next to wall outlets for you to set up your laptop, and free guest WIFI.  The service writers all recognize me and they are all very professional.  They even offer to wash your car for you before they give it back!

However, this morning I had a rude shock.  I decided to wait for my car to be done, instead of using their free shuttle service and coming back later.  I set up my computer, hooked up to their Guest WiFi, and proceeded to try and read some of the local political blogs.  One pair of blogs I occasionally read (although sometimes I don't know why) is the Humboldt Herald and the Humboldt Mirror.  For those that don't frequent the cage-lining pages of these two political blogs, they are the opposite of each other,  The Herald is what I would consider strongly left of center, and the Mirror is way out in right field.  (The comment sections of each of these blogs are a petri dish of toxic waste.  It also looks like they both may be dying a slow death with no new posts for three months for the Mirror, and no posts in the last month for the Herald.)

Imagine my surprise when I opened a window for each of these two blogs, and found out that the network administrator was censoring/blocking the Humboldt Herald, but not the Humboldt Mirror.  The exact message read:

I did what the message said, and asked the receptionist if I could talk to the System Administrator for Mid City.  A nice gentleman named "Scott" came out and explained that their system uses a blocking system from Sonicwall, their router provider, and that he just checks "categories" of blocking, the specifics of deciding what individual site(s) to block is coming from information provided by Sonicwall (Sonicwall was recently bought by Dell Computer).  

Scott thinks that the Herald may have generated more visibility on the internet and has become listed as a political site within the Sonicwall database, where the Mirror has not generated that much coverage or interest and therefore is probably simply "not rated" which will not trigger any blocks.  I asked Scott to check it out for himself and perhaps even consider not using the "political/advocacy groups" category for blocking guest access, since the Sonicwall blocking list is not filtering this category in a fair and impartial way.  

I will report back next time I am at Mid City and let you know if the situation is still the same. 

...and yes, I am a "card carrying member of the ACLU", how did you guess?  :)

"Thank you for bringing to my attention the problem with the two web sites that you were trying to reach while having your vehicle serviced at Mid-City Motor World.  I have attached the SonicWall rating for each of the sites that you tried to reach while visiting our store.

Humboldtmirror.wordpress.com is rated as:  Information Technology/Computers and Web Communications

Humboldtherald.wordpress.com is rated as:  Political/Advocacy Groups

 

  We have adjusted the settings of the SonicWall, to allow the humboldtherald.wordpress.com.

Again thank you for bringing it to my attention and sorry for any problems that it may have caused."

We had a bit of a rough night.  The boy was not feeling well and we were not sure if he was going to be up to the traditional Easter Egg Hunt, family gathering, and celebration of the birthday of Cesar Chavez or not.  But he bounced back this morning, and we were back on track for our countdown to the Great Santa Easter Egg Hunt!

I should explain. My son has figured out (with my learned assistance) that if the Easter Bunny goes to every house on the same morning to hide eggs, then this bunny must have some special superhuman powers.  In fact, as we all know, the only person that has the power to visit every participating house around the world in one day is Santa.  We all also know that nobody just works one day out of the year.  My son strongly suspects that this "Easter Bunny" thing is just a costume/disguise that Santa wears while hiding eggs so he can work off-season.  He has his suspicions about the Tooth Fairy too, he says he thinks Santa has a tutu in that closet.

Anyway, to get back to my story, Logan had a two stage hunt this year.  The first part was a traditional egg hunt, providing eggs filled with jelly beans, chocolate candies, and tootsie rolls.  (including multiple easter packages with iTunes cards in them, and one with a spot of cash, that easter Santa knows what kids want!).  

Then, his sister and her fiancee, Joe, along with their friend Leeann had a clue driven hunt for him.  He had to decipher six clues, each leading to the next, to find his easter basket from her which not only had candy and treats, but two movies he has not see yet as well, Goonies, and Coraline.  I especially liked the twist on the final clue.  The basket was hidden behind Logan's iMac.  For the sixth and final clue, he had to "buy" hints from the adults using his candy as currency.  I told him his basket location would get him "all keyed up" for a tootsie roll.  His sister told him the present would be the "apple of his eye", this clue cost a chocolate.  Finally, his mom told him "once you go Mac, you never go back" for some Jelly Beans, at that point he figured it out and searched his computer desk, finding the basket!

Here are a few photos from today:

Another problem, another solution.