Lifelong Android user, and I know nothing about Apple, but when it came time for them to upgrade from their OG Razr's last year, I was at a crossroads. These people are tech illiterate. I ended up telling them to buy IPhone.
Believe it or not, they mostly figured it all out pretty easily. They still get confused and scared by FB video calls coming in, but otherwise are able to talk, text, use social media, etc. So much so they even bought an iPad.
It seems the reason I like Android - tons of options and customizability, are the exact opposite of what an older user wants from their device.
I got my 90 year old grandma to use an iPad. The other day I saw her switching languages via the keyboard to search for a video on YouTube using a combination of Chinese and English, and I was dumbfounded.
It's a true testament to the intuitiveness of Apple UX.
Switched parents over to Mac/iPhone years ago too. They still have issues, but it's usually something like "I maximized my window, how do I get out of that?". I wish Apple would release a "dumb mode", which removes 90% of the already limited UX features of macOS/iOS.
"Assistive Access is a distinctive iOS experience, with more focused features and a simplified user interface, which allows people with cognitive disabilities to use iPhone with greater ease and independence."
I wish Apple would be consistent with their reasoning abilities :/ Much of it is great, so it's that much more confusing for people when there are things that make no sense.
The gestures on iPhones come to mind. I'm used to them and find them indispensable now, but what? Swipe down on one side and it brings me some controls, swipe down on the other and I see my lock screen? Where am I? What's happening? No reason or logic.
I switched back to an iPhone SE, and it’s so much better at UX. There’s a single home button that removes you from any app. Swiping down from the top anywhere brings up your notifications. Swiping up from the bottom anywhere brings up controls. Double tapping the home button while locked brings up your credit cards, which are also authorized because the home button has a fingerprint reader. Holding down the power button brings you to the power off screen. This phone has functionally been an upgrade in usability across the board compared to my iPhone mini.
It used to be that swiping down would lock the screen and swiping up would show Control Center. But when iPhones lost the home button, swiping up took up its click behaviours. Swiping down from the left for locking the screen and swiping down from the right to show Control Center is indeed somewhat awkward, but it’s not immediatelly clear to me what alternative they could’ve gone with that would leave you with the same level of quick access as before.
1. It's your notification tray, you know, the thing that's been default behavior of swiping down on smartphones since their inception.
2. It's not one side or the other either. It used to be that anywhere you swiped down opened the notification tray. Now only the right side has a different effect, opening control center. The notification tray still takes over two-thirds of the swipe-down space at the top.
> It's a true testament to the intuitiveness of Apple UX.
I think it's much simpler than that. For normal people, the aesthetics of an experience is the experience. There is no functionality, form is functionality.
Apple does this more than anyone else as a side effect of different design goals. An iPhone competes with the 1990s-era cable TV-equipped television, not an Android phone, especially for older adults. In that comparison, you can see how the iPhone "UX" could be "improved:" how could it achieve the same level of effortlessness as switching a channel, an idea of an aesthetic experience distilled to a brand name and a button press, and then having the aesthetic experiences you like transferred to you continuously, nonstop, throughout the day, affordably?
You are talking about watching YouTube specifically, and consider that if your grandma could "just" watch a channel with a mix of Chinese and English content she "likes," she would be even "happier." I am not trying to get into the normative argument over which aesthetic experiences are more meaningful or preferred or whatever. It's a way of looking at things differently, without the myopic point of view of frontend web development.
Once you deconstruct your lived experience of watching your grandma,
"Apple UX" looks more like a marketing idea that is inferior to many alternatives.
That's a bit of an unusual way of looking at iPhones. They seem to do much the same as Android phones and very different from 90s TVs especially when if comes to taking photos, doing banking, making calls and the like.
> That's a bit of an unusual way of looking at iPhones.
This is the kind of comment that becomes a downvote magnet. An unusual look is the point.
I don't think it's true that there's some frontend-web-developer-graphic-design-nerd-sense-of-UX superiority to iPhones compared to Android phones. That's what this is about. There's a bunch of observations written here by non-elderly people trying to reason about why iPhones work better for the elderly than Android phones or whatever. Man, just get them a cable TV subscription and pay for it, because that's what they really want: free TV. That's what everyone wants.
It's only in this country that iPhones have such high market share. The fact is, Android or iPhone, the end user is mostly using it to consume the same garbage - mindless freakshow television in TikTok and YouTube.
Mostly couldn't be more true of a generalization either. The sum of the time spent on consuming linear video content on phones is probably like, 90-99% of the time spent on the devices. Even accounting for people playing long session video games in Asia, because children are overall a small part of the population, and adults are for the most part not playing games.
All of these hard, true facts about how utterly narrow an average user's usage of phones attacks sacrosanct magical thoughts in HN readers' heads regarding the diversity of the experiences people are having on computers. They think it's this wondrous world of diverse meaning. There's some truth to that. It may be you and I are having wondrous diverse meaningful experiences. But the average person is scrolling TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.
People who disagree and downvote: at the end of the day, how do you know? I mean, have you ever seen the engagement statistics for Apple Photos? For a banking app? Making phone calls? No! But there are countless surveys, all pointing to ridiculous numbers of hours spent in TikTok. 90m a day on average for Americans. That means 1 in 5 people may be spending 180m too! Who do you know spends 90m a day taking photos, banking, making calls? It's far more rare. You can look at the engagement for Google Maps and Spotify, which may be the only non-social media, non-TV apps with high engagement, but it would be intellectually dishonest to count Google Maps - you're using your car for navigation with an appliance, not your phone - and Spotify is an aberration, although still passive mindless consumption, a better more affordable UX compared to radio. If you could watch TV while driving a car, people would, and that would be it for radio and Spotify.
So of course a phone can converge a bunch of other activities. But it doesn't mean that I'm wrong. I know they have a bunch of functionality. The question is, does it matter? No. The average person wants freakshow TV. I'm not the first or the last person to say this. It has never been so stark though.
My mum's 88 and found the iPhone's esim facility useful recently recently when she flew to NYC to represent a British womens group at the UN. I think you overgeneralize a bit about old people just wanting to click dumb content.
This type of comment gets downvoted because its right on the border of incoherent rambling. You say there's no ux difference for the elderly between iPhones and Androids, I say you're dead wrong. I've invariably become the IT guy for most of my extended family, and all of the elderly members found an iPhone easier to manage. Once I got one of them to switch, they convinced the rest.
Your argument is basically pure conjecture, everyone in the thread was talking about their personal experience with elderly family members. And your argument is there is no difference between the two devices, based on surveys for the usage percentage of TikTok? Are you kidding me? Has the thought not occured to you that elderly people might be a minority and outlier in such a survey?
Even granting that 90% of elderly screen time is spent watching TikTok, that does absolutely nothing to prove your claim that there is no difference between Android or iPhone for this purpose. Someone above mentioned a simple example of the differences between the two. Androids have an airplane mode toggle in their notification tray while iPhones don't. This is pretty much the sole reason for elderly Android users constantly turning on airplane mode, a problem which is almost nonexistent with iPhone users.
I'm saying that the difference between the UX of Android and iPhone for the purpose of watching free TV is small, while the difference between a real cable television subscription and an iPhone/Android phone is large. Frontend web developers have zero relevant experience that would give them some insight as to how to "design" "better" television.
I am not really talking about IT burden for your family or whatever, which I also think is erroneously attributed to UX. Of course, if you wanted to reduce your IT burden, you could just say, "No," and nothing bad would happen. They would figure things out.
> And your argument is there is no difference between the two devices, based on surveys for the usage percentage of TikTok?
Yes. I mean, isn't that the definition of form versus function? I'm trying to show you that the primary function of these devices is really, "Watch TikTok," which is a colorful way of saying, consume linear video content effortlessly. Everything else is dwarfed. Another POV is, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube all agree with me: they don't charge more to show ads to Android users compared to iOS users, they charge more for targeting and the size of that audience in unexpected ways, but not in a way that makes sense for, "iOS users are better." Even if I agree with you that they are!
What people observe is true: Do I think the aesthetic experience of an iPhone makes these normal educated people more confident in solving their problems themselves rather than asking you? Yes, but that's a different thing than UX. There are lots of grandmas using Samsung phones, and I think that's because Samsung, as a manufacturer, cares about the aesthetics more. Maybe not OUR grandmas, but grandmas everywhere else in the world.
> Has the thought not occurred to you that elderly people might be a minority and outlier in such a survey?
Elderly people definitely watch average, meaning LARGE, amounts of television. I think they are also going to be average users of TikTok. Everybody who touches TikTok likes it.
In Android, there's a keyboard icon on the interface, you click it and choose your keyboard language. It's two clicks. Is the Apple one more intuitive?
On my Pixel phone keyboard I have two ways to switch language: Holding the spacebar gives me a list labeled "Change keyboard" with six options whereas clicking the keyboard icon in the lower-right corner gives me a similar list except the title is "Choose input method", the options are in a completely different order, the options have slightly different names ("English (US) QWERTY" vs "English (US) (QWERTY) Gboard"), the list uses radio buttons instead of a checkmark, and includes an option for "Google Voice Typing".
These might seem like minor issues to us, but they can derail non-technical users who may be confused why the list looks different from the last time they switched languages. And this lack of coordination between elements is par for the course for Google design. Not saying there aren't examples of bad design from Apple, but most of their products seem to have someone in a position of authority who pays attention to detail and their issues seem less like oversights than bad decisions.
The downside of flexibility. Choose input method is the system list. Holding the space bar is the keyboard's method. I sometimes switch to a non-Google keyboard and the Choose input method way of switching is how I get back. I didn't know about the long press on the spacebar method, learned something new today.
I have a third. I have two languages defined, and because of that I have a little globe to the left of the spacebar. Tapping that switches the default one (as far as I can tell, it biases what word it thinks you're aiming for to that language.)
Somehow I always find it's on the secondary language and I haven't worked out if I'm doing that by accident or it's changing on its own.
The "hold the space bar" method is entirely your keyboard's feature, not Android. Though it is a relatively common pattern in keyboards on both OSes, in its defense (iOS uses it too).
But I don't think I'd recommend Gboard to someone who needs a simplified experience. Gboard is very complicated.
> But I don't think I'd recommend Gboard to someone who needs a simplified experience. Gboard is very complicated.
Exactly. I'm not keen to attempt to explain the distinction between an input method and a keyboard language setting to a five-year-old or a reluctant 85-year-old. Nor am I keen to troubleshoot how they managed to get something as basic as a keyboard into a weird state.
Don't get me wrong, I personally appreciate the flexibility, use Android on my personal device, and I help my folks and some of my uncles when they run into an issue on their Android phones that they can't solve after a little searching. But through trial-and-error I've concluded that any family members who reach out to me at the first sign of trouble need to be in the Apple ecosystem.
Yeah, I broadly agree. Better accessibility tools and better built-in apps mean you can just lock it down tight and it's probably good enough without much more effort... and that's a big deal.
With Android... it depends on the manufacturer. But mostly it's much more complicated and you'll have to find long-term stable apps (good luck![1]) because the OEM probably bundled ad-ridden or obtuse stuff.
Or, a lot of old people are still pretty capable. My aunt is 90 and she manages her laptop and phone just fine.
I am not impressed at all by Apple's UX. Inconsistencies abound, and there are lots of hidden gestures and actions that you have no clue about unless you stumble upon them or someone shows you. It might be better than Android, but that's a low bar.
Changing Green circle from "maximuze" to "full screen" with no way to revert it - yes, I'm sure there's some sketchy kmod or whatever - is one of the most baffling decisions Apple has made.
I don’t remember any instructions coming with any Mac I’ve bought I. The last decades. The license/warranty info sure, but actual printed documentation is limited to a couple pages of to plug stuff together.
The intuitiveness of the Apple UI is not a given. A friend of mine was one of the first Mac developers, and an Apple man since then. He's old now, and both he and his wife grouse about the iOS UI and how unintuitive and difficult it is. Even my wife, also a lifelong Apple fan, finds herself frustrated when attempting to do tasks with her iPhone much more obscure than "launch app". Like the iPhone has a built-in Apple TV remote, but to use it you have to swipe down from the upper right where the clock is, then press the button that looks like an Apple TV remote (assuming you know what one looks like). Not something you can easily discover or figure out on your own. I can't even keep straight where to swipe from.
I think some time after Jony Ive took over Apple's design department, design wankery supplanted human factors. The original Mac UI was made functional and easy to discover, and then made pretty. Modern iOS is made pretty and clever with things like "pinch to zoom", but the emphasis is not on making things easy to discover or making it clear what you can do (but the "launch app" case is pretty well solved for).
The Apple hardware also does nothing to protect against tech support scams.
One of the most important, and basic, things to do is make sure ad blockers are installed on devices and/or on a firewall. This matters before a broader decline in cognitive functionality too.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see a blanket ban against all digital advertising for certain age groups in the EU within the next 10 years.
I found that iPhone and iPad work great, but my parent also wanted a computer and I went with it. 95% of my support calls are regarding something with the computer.
The iMac really is just subtracting value from their life. The phone and tablet are fantastic, but I want to hire someone to break into the home and steal that computer.
For my dad, he occasionally composes Word documents and uses other MacOS software for his business, so finding analogous iPad software and teaching him how to use that wouldn't be worth the effort.
iPad could probably work for my mom, but she just uses hand-me-down macs from my dad or me/my siblings.
The issue is old people don't like change. If an older person is used to the WIMP interface there is no point forcing them to change how they do everything.
I'd agree until few months ago, but now my wife's dad lucidity is degrading pretty quickly.
Until few years ago he was a proficient digital photographer with advanced Photoshop knowledge. He was definitely tech literate and also have used Apple gears its infancy (the first guy in town to own an iPhone).
But now he forgets his passcode, or the fact that he can just use his thumb to unlock the phone. He keeps deleting his bank app and then goes to the nearby computer store shop to get it back. He also saved a scammer number claiming to be his daughter with a new phone (well, actually asked a friend to save it because he forgot how to do it).
Because we live abroad it's quite hard to check on him and his device to make sure he's safe and have been wondering myself how to best deal with the situation.
We did the same thing (but with Android) for my mother-in-law, who is starting to suffer from dementia (and literally clicks on everything). It's the same way I manage my kids' phones and it works pretty well.
Everything you describes sucks but I dunno why you seem to think it's an Apple issue?
If somebody's lucid enough to use technology, put them on Apple stuff. If they're not lucid enough to use technology then Apple or Android doesn't matter – both are unusable.
I am an Android developer (and user) with 14 years of professional experience, and I put my elderly mother on iPhone many years ago.
For me it came simply down to the simplicity of the iOS system. There are fewer clicks, buttons and functions for her to accidentally get into.
Another reason is also that my other siblings (and all of the grandchildren ) are all on iPhone, so I am not a her only IT support person in case one was needed ASAP when I would be unavailable.
Personally I don't enjoy the feel of iOS but for her it is perfect.
>Believe it or not, they mostly figured it all out pretty easily. They still get confused and scared by FB video calls coming in, but otherwise are able to talk, text, use social media, etc. So much so they even bought an iPad.
For the 99% of use cases elderly people have with a phone, what exactly is it you imagine that Apple is doing better than Android? You click an icon to text, phone or browse the web. The experience is nearly identical.
The idea that Android has lots of customization, but Apple doesn't, is a myth; even Apple has far more options to tweak than the average use is ever going to have to get into.
We had that same experience. My wife’s grandmother was 90-something when I got her an Android tablet thinking it would be easy to set up. She kept doing stuff that broke the experience for her. It would go home when she was trying to do something else, and wouldn’t go home when she wanted to. I can’t remember everything but it was enough to really frustrate her. After a while switched to an iPad and 90% of the issues went away. Only one that didn’t was taking a pic with a camera. There was something we couldn’t sort: (IIRC, it’s been a while) moving the red button to the left instead of right side so her good hand could click it easily. And she sometimes still turns wifi off. But that’s it, and she’s now 103. Maybe they’re better now. Not going to test that!
The problem I guess I was referring to was options between mfgs. Pixel's Android isn't Samsung's Android, which isn't Oneplus's Android, and so on. Not just different looks and layouts, all different default apps, settings menus, features, and so on. Heck my wife even gets frustrated between Samsung updates, as they often change something she can't figure out how to get back.
Generally if you ask any IPhone user how to do X, or even Google it, the results should work exactly the same on your phone. This is definitely -not- the case for Android.
I cannot align the 3 apps the person uses on the thumb side of the home screen and have the rest unused. I have no dedicated back button THIS IS THE WORST for a 98 year old with very shaky hands.
Consistency? Everything is all over the place for different apps.
The back button is probably the biggest thing keeping me from an android. Every time I’m handed an android to look at something that stupid button gets triggered.
> Consistency throughout the user experience and, most importantly, consistency through time.
> Macos ui is largely frozen in 2002ish
> IOS is frozen in 2008ish
This is verifiably extremely incorrect? Lots of things about the core UX of both platforms have changed since then. Heck, even turning an iPhone off isn't as simple as "press and hold the power button" anymore.
Go back to the late 80s and compare Mac GUI to window's. There are still important themes in the Mac UI that remain, specifically the menu bar at the top. I could get around System 1.0 even though Ive never touched a classic OS mac.
Win 2.0? I grew up with pre-95 windows and Id be completely lost.
Id go further back, but then Id be comparing a GUI to a TUI. (Which to be fair are superior to GUIs)
Android phone will randomly stop working for some reason nobody's ever heard of and possibly with specifics tied to whatever particular phone you got, that's what Apple does better. That and not getting viruses.
Simple example: Android has a airplane mode toggle in the notification tray, iPhone does not. No surprise that once I put my elderly family on iPhones all problems of accidently enabling airplane mode magically went away.
Default logo sizes are larger, settings menus are basically the same no matter the device, software and hardware are coupled and designed by the same company making everything snappier. The subtle.design difference also come into play.
I use Android myself, but it is a fact that Apple is superior in UX, which is unsurprising given that they are obsessed with UX as a company in general and the whole ecosystem is designed by themselves alone, while Android is designed and developed by many players. Even a 2 year old can use iPhones and iPads.
I must live in a parallel world because to me Apple is the king of hidden shortcuts which are hard to discover for beginners.
Multiple fingers gestures doing different things, hidden swipe menus and features depending on the offset of where you swiped, that's all very hard for non experienced users.
Not that Android is perfect, I'd say it's still not great either in that regard but the UI is more discoverable for sure for beginners.
I really miss the win2k era in terms of user research and UX, sure it didn't look the best on screenshots but it was made to be as discoverable as possible.
The best example I had of the same (started with Amstrad CPC, then Amiga, PC ... software engineer for almost two decades).
I couldn't find "Find on page" on iOS/Safari, so I did a Google search on how to so it - result snippet on Google was cut and actual results page was full page of forum replies, and I was having trouble finding it by just scrolling.
Now years later (and only Android) I forgot, it was something rather non intuitive where they've hidden that option.
> Multiple fingers gestures doing different things, hidden swipe menus and features depending on the offset of where you swiped, that's all very hard for non experienced users.
I can't think of any of those which are _required_, though. They are shortcuts, sure, but do not need to be known to use the device.
That's funny because I heard my friend say this at work yesterday when I suggested that he should gift his mother an iPhone:
"Oh my mother would have too much difficulty switching from Android to iOS. I know because I use iPhone and things that have dedicated buttons in some Android phones are gestures in iOS. Like the back button for example."
My wife does an impeccable job of managing smartphones and tablet computers for many older relatives (and some younger tech-challenged ones too, I suppose) and they're also all on Apple gear.
But it's not because the users understand Apple stuff better. They can learn the core workflows they use on any device, and they have most of the important parts written down anyway.
The primary reason she put them on Apple was so that they would have mostly the same problems and she could learn from one and apply to the others. I suppose this matters more the more relatives you manage devices for. But as you say, the range of opportunities one can get with Androids or PCs is much wider – which translates to a wider range of problems also.
If they only use basic functions (phone, text, email) then Android/Pixel + Chromebook is the way to go imo. One login for everything, including YouTube + music family plan. If they screw up the Chromebook just factory reset it and they're back where they left off.
I think iPhone being easier for seniors is a well advertised myth.
Did you actually try to get someone older to use the swipe gestures that are mandatory on new iPhones? Many of them can't be disabled even through a11y or provisioning options and constantly frustrate.
Another massive issue is that iOS doesn't really mark clickable elements / buttons anymore - after iOS7 redesign it's really hard for people to recognize what's a tappable element. Especially since a lot of apps now have their own UI design language.
You don't notice these things until you try to teach someone non-tech savvy. Then you notice just how inconsistent and horrible to use the new OSes are. Even Apple ones.
> What challenges did you face with them and iPhone?
- Difficulty typing on the tiny SE screen
- Can't send text messages from the computer (no Messages on Chromebook)
- Accidentally muting contacts all the time, so missing calls
- Butt dialing all the time
- Not being able to get back to the phone screen to find the speaker button and other basic ui functions were not intuitive
- Spanning multiple ecosystems is a recipe for confusion (Apple photos vs Google photos, for example), and if you have to choose one Google wins (youtube, docs, chromecast, etc, etc).
- Tons of text spam
Going all-in on Apple (iPad instead of Chromebook) would make some of these better, but still worse overall imo. Just look at the iPhone SE next to the basic Pixel A, the SE looks like a tiny antique (the bezel really hurts).
A financial Power of Attorney is the legal document that gives you the ability to act as that person legally in most ways. It requires only the person to sign the PoA document. Using it often requires some bureaucratic hoop jumping, but that's nonetheless what it does. It doesn't prevent the person themselves from taking legal or financial actions – like giving money to scammers. For that you would need Conservatorship which is a higher level of responsibility and must be reviewed by a judge. At least, that's the situation in the US. Things may work differently elsewhere. And also, for reasons to do with the federal system, Social Security benefits are sort of their own thing and have a different process.
Both Android and iOS, but especially iOS, have made large accessibility regressions by switching to a frequently gesture based interface where all sorts of quite similar swipes do different things changing the screen context and revealing hidden modes. For use by people with e.g. Parkinson's disease this is catastrophic. Voice commands can somewhat compensate, but I think we're all familiar with the many ways in which voice commands can fail to perform even simple requests, and also how sensitive the voice assistants are to changes in both speed and volume of received speech. While iOS does have some good accessibility settings, they are not comprehensive, and overall usability has in some big ways declined substantially, even while more and more tasks have to be done online.
I purchased a paper user manual “for the elderly” for iOS/phone/ipad. They update it every so often and the text is large. They got a few years of use.
Now down to a home phone and an iPad with Facebook.
Thanks - my wife and I have recently got her mother (who is in her 90's) to try using an iPhone. It never occurred to me to get a printed manual - I think that might really help her.
Yeah, I have to echo this. I moved all the relatives who would listen to MacBook Air + iPhone, and I have just one relative who is holding out on a cheap Lenovo laptop - it's as much work to keep them running as all the others combined.
Yes, going the Apple route is more expensive. But unless you have a lot of time on your hands to deal with teaching weird Windows and Android edge-cases over and over again... well worth the investment. And even elderly Apple gear will generally serve your relatives well.
I hate it, but Apple is really is the best choice here. Their devices and software pass the grandmother test better than anything else. The UX is unmatched. I dream of the day my grandmother can use GNU/Linux for the privacy, freedom, and frugality, but I'm not sure that day will ever come.
This. The moment I switched my mom to Mac OS and iPhone, literally all issues she had with computer disappeared. She still needed me to help with Photoshop install and backups, but besides that - no problem for the last 7 years. And running on the same machine at that with no problems.
Having worked for a large app development consultancy that did parity between Apple and Android apps, the Apple vetting progress was rigorous and would often reject apps based on UX. While a pain, the result compares in comparison to what is on the Android App Store.
I did use to own an Android and switched to an Apple. I found that Apple products are more intuitive in their UX and setup (or really anything that was complicated to do on Android) just worked on Apple.
Just make sure someone else is set as a recovery contact for the Apple ID, and also knows their Apple ID password and device screenlock code. One day you’ll need it. :/
My dad's 82 has an IPP 12.9, iPhone 12 Pro Max, and a Macbook Air. Over time, the MBA usage has dropped off, and is mainly used for financial sites that don't play well with Safari/iPadOS.
The only real issue he has is printing. His MBA is basically an AirPrint bridge at this point. One day we'll get him an AirPrint compatible printer.
Doesn't solve them putting the phone in airplane mode or getting the camera coated in an opaque film, though. Also, every elderly family member with an iPhone has forgotten the iCloud password and asked me why they cannot install apps. But it's still better than the alternatives.
Another advantage of Apple devices is consistancy of UI from device to device (all iPhones work the same), and from form factor to form factor (iPhones to iPads and even to workstations, to a degree). When they get a new phone, it works like their prior one.
Mother in law had a PC and a whole bunch of old Android tablets. I'd get a phone call about once a week asking some kind of support question.
When everything melted down and the PC got too old I got her to buy an iPad. Haven't heard a squeak since - she loves it, it does everything she wants and she's now totally self-sufficient.
I would downvote but the option has been removed. The OP doesn't mention brand. Their parents may already have iPhone. The only phone issue mentioned is airplane mode, so it wouldn't make a difference.
Android phones have an "Easy Mode" which improves usability for seniors and anyone who prefers bigger buttons and simpler controls. I would expect enabling this may help.
The app-switcher in newer IpadOS is an endless confusion to my mother. Somehow she opens multiple copies of web-browser, email, etc, and then cant find anything.
How much I hope I could disable that one feature!
Hiding the Inbox folder in Email is another classic I need to fix monthly.
It might help to disable "Allow Multiple Apps" and "Picture in Picture" on her iPad. This also disables slide over. Also consider disabling gestures.
iOS 17 offers to disable all of this stuff on initial install if you set up a child account, because kids tend to get confused, especially by slide over. But they should probably offer that sort of thing as an "easy mode" option for all users.
Lifelong Android user, and I know nothing about Apple, but when it came time for them to upgrade from their OG Razr's last year, I was at a crossroads. These people are tech illiterate. I ended up telling them to buy IPhone.
Believe it or not, they mostly figured it all out pretty easily. They still get confused and scared by FB video calls coming in, but otherwise are able to talk, text, use social media, etc. So much so they even bought an iPad.
It seems the reason I like Android - tons of options and customizability, are the exact opposite of what an older user wants from their device.