
My mom's experience with an iPad - alexknight
http://alexknight.net/blog/2010/12/25/my-moms-experience-with-an-ipad.html
======
nonane
We've been trying to get my mom to use a computer for as long as I can
remember. She tried a few times to learn how to 'get on the internet' on a PC
but never really used it herself. She'd get my brother to send emails from her
email account.

A few months back we got her an iPad. She instantly took on to it. She was
emailing recipes, sharing pictures and connecting with friends and family on
Facebook within the first week. She picked everything up surprisingly quickly.
Seeing the iPad have this effect on a person who hasn't used a computer for
more than a day or two in ther life time was shocking.

~~~
alexknight
Agreed. That's what I'm talking about here. Seeing people who aren't tech
savvy, who have always found computers frustrating, and then suddenly
discovering that using their iPad is enjoyable is awesome. For me as a geek it
really puts a smile on my face seeing my mom and other people actually enjoy
using software.

I have a feeling my mom is going to start using her iPad more instead of just
watching the cooking network while on the couch. The biggest problem with
cooking shows is you can't really follow along while on the couch which is
frustrating. You're inspired to cook, but you have to run to the kitchen.
Instead of having a TV in your kitchen, an iPad on a stand with your favourite
cooking app seems like the ideal way to go.

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billswift
>She just calls them “apps” which clearly shows the power of Apple’s marketing
influence.

Huh? I have never owned or used an Apple product, and since I don't watch
television I don't think I have ever seen an Apple commercial, and I have
called programs "apps" for over a decade. It is a common term across all OSes.

~~~
alexknight
Contrary to what you may think, the layman doesn't go around saying "I just
installed this awesome app". Before the iPhone got "apps" the reality is that
the term itself wasn't popular until Apple started referring to "applications"
as "apps".

It first started with Steve Jobs calling them "apps" then eventually Apple
started renaming everything in iTunes and their documentation from
"applications" to just "apps". If your non-tech savvy parents start using the
term "app" then I'm pretty sure that speaks for itself and Apple deserves some
credit.

~~~
baddox
Perhaps the exception is the term "killer app," which is entirely mainstream
and surely has been around for at least 20 years.

~~~
Luyt
Indeed! VisiCalc was a killer app on the apple ][.

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beej71
Not to doubt these stories, but I know a mom just got an iPad, and she's not
comfortable using the thing at all (she uses Macs for her day-to-day
computing). She's not remotely dim--she doesn't doesn't naturally work the way
an iPad works.

So that's another mom's experience.

------
protomyth
My Mom used the iPad my Dad bought in a pretty sparring manner, mostly to look
at Flickr and MLB (listening to games not on MLB Package on cable). She didn't
like reading on it.

My brother and I got her an Apple TV for Xmas and so far that is going very
well. Netflix is a hit (after we convinced her she wasn't paying for each
show) and so is Flickr to see the grandchild on the big tv. It also helps all
the video Dad has from iTunes.

~~~
mitjak
Your mom seems quite open-minded indeed. It will take a little bit of time
before I can convince my mom ordinary cable TV isn't the only way.

~~~
protomyth
Actually, she is pretty much a tech hater, but the DVR supplied by DirecTV and
then the local cable company sure helped. We described Netflix in terms of a
DVR and it seemed to take. The new remote (aluminum) for the Apple TV works
well since it is so much simpler than the cable companies remote.

------
jdp23
We got an iPad for my SO's mom for her birthday. She was skeptical at first,
but she loves it.

What are the cooking apps you're going to recommend?

~~~
rbritton
For your own personal recipes, I'd recommend Paprika:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1798717>

~~~
cdr
Paprika seems to be 100% tied to the iPad, which I don't like - I'd much
rather have an iPad interface to something on the web.

------
dolinsky
My moms experience with my iPad:

Spent a good minute staring at the device once it was on trying to figure out
where Firefox was on the screen she was on.

Spent a good minute, once I told her she needed to use Safari, wondering how
she could bring up a keyboard to type the address she wanted into the browser.

Spent a good minute once she was on the sign in screen for gmail trying to
figure out how to enter her username/password combo. Then she spent another 30
seconds looking for the enter key.

Once she was inside gmail the delete key took a mentioning, moving to the next
page of her inbox was a lesson in futility, and while her fingers are
substantially smaller than mine, she couldn't work the checkboxes without
selecting the row above or below the one she wanted.

Apps? Apps? Are you kidding me! (trying to do my best Jim Mora impression)

While the iPad is great, and personally I love mine (doesn't hurt that I won
it from a Rackspace marketing survey), it has huge way to go before it passes
the Mom test.

~~~
Deadsunrise
So what? It took her 5 minutes to get to her email the first time she ever
used an ipad. Do you really consider that a failure?

I'm sure that after learning that the keyboard comes out automatically and
having used it for a while she can do it in 30 seconds without having to think
about it.

I got my parents an ipad about a month ago. My mom has a macbook air and my
father an Imac but now they use the ipad much more than the computers. They
got it really fast compared to OSX that they still don't understand
completely.

Also it's normal to not hit what you want the first time you use a touch
screen. It even took me some time to get accurate at it.

------
ugh
My parents have a kitchen and living room laptop which is used to surf the web
and (not so often) write emails (using Gmail) nearly all of the time. An iPad
would be a perfect replacement but the big problem is Office. My parents very
rarely would also like to write something or open some document and they will
get annoyed pretty quickly if that doesn’t work without a hitch. They need a
laptop with Microsoft Office installed, an iPad (through no fault of its own)
just doesn’t provide that kind of fidelity.

I bet they would have loved to use an iPad in the living room and in the
kitchen before they had a laptop but it just doesn’t cut it anymore. They are
used to their laptop.

(This equally applies to other “alternative” devices. A Chrome laptop would be
so close to perfect for my parents. Google Chrome already is the one program
they use all the time on their laptop. But Google Docs just isn’t good
enough.)

~~~
alexknight
Have they tried the iWork suite for iPad? There is also Quickoffice HD which
allows you to edit Office documents and it works pretty well.

~~~
ugh
iWork tends to fail in interesting ways. (They have an iMac as their big
desktop computer and I tried to convince them to use iWork at first but pretty
quickly had to resort to installing Office.) My parents need perfect fidelity
all the time. People tend to send strange documents around and they have to be
able to open them.

------
cyunker
I like my iPad, but the weakest link is that I can't do any serious typing.
Even for small emails, it can be a pain. I need a keyboard I can feel.

~~~
alexknight
I've heard people say that. I can definitely understand some may type slower.
I prefer a physical keyboard for long form writing, but I'm actually
pleasantly surprised at how quickly and accurately I can type on the virtual
keyboard. It's pretty comfortable for me to write a 2000 word piece on an
iPad. For some though, they won't be comfortable doing it.

~~~
jawee
Mine isn´t speed. I find myself typing just as quickly on a virtual keyboard,
but it just starts to get overly tedious and annoying because of the extra
level of focus it requires. If I´m typing anything more than a couple of
sentences I quickly become irate from it...

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nightlifelover
These posts make me think I should no longer follow ycombinator.. I have a
hard time keeping up with all the posts, if you post that much irrelevant
stuff.

~~~
sbisker
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But that's Ok. The important thing is, we're evolving together. (Ok, it's
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If you want to see this board have different sorts of content, poke around and
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If next week you still find we're not the droids you're looking for, there's
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positive - I think it'll help both your enjoyment here and people's reactions
to your comments - and have a great holiday.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
I feel like that at some point we're going to need something like subreddits
to help the community along.

