10 - My mum & her iPad

As I told you all very early on, one of my prime reasons for buying an iPad was my mum. When I returned from living in Japan, I showed her my iPod touch and she was clearly taken by it. She loved the simplicity of the interface, and in particular the photo browser, but thought it was too small - both for her eyesight and her not-so-dexterous hands. She's 70, suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and does not speak English as her first language, so being easy-to-use is probably the biggest selling point for her where technology is concerned.

But, as I also have mentioned, she's not a technophobe. From a very young age, I can remember that it was always my mum who sorted out technology in our house - from tuning the television, to setting up the hi-fi, to programming the VCR. In later years, she has learned to use the DVR (to the point where I'm probably going to need to upgrade it to a model with two tuners and a bigger hard disk), the DVD player, SMS on her mobile phone (she uses  emoticons and shorthand like a teenager) and most recently, the desktop computer. She uses FireFox, Gmail, the BBC iPlayer, internet radio and Skype.

It wasn't all plain sailing. It took her a while to understand the virtual nature of where things are stored, and she's never quite got her head around tabbed interfaces. Still, she's managed to surprise me a few times by adopting features without my help, and discovering functions that I was previously unaware of.

A few months ago, when I was visiting her and had a laptop with me, she enquired whether that would be a good way for her to use the internet. The problem with the desktop workstation is that it's not conveniently located. It's in the guest room. If someone is visiting, she can't really use it, and in general, it doesn't fit well with her daily household routine. We quickly established that the laptop wouldn't be a better solution. It was it too bulky and heavy for her to use comfortably. She also couldn't get her head around the trackpad and didn't like having cables trailing everywhere. She decided that she would to stick with using the desktop workstation.

Then, back in February, I showed her some of the tablet concept videos from Conde Nast and the iPad demos by Steve Jobs and that St. Ives fella. Her eyes lit up with keen interest. In fact, her comment was, "Why don't you get me one of those?"

Told!

It was surprising to me then, that when I returned from the USA two weeks ago and presented her with the iPad, along with several other gifts, she didn't even blink. In fact, she was far more interested in the jar of "Goober Peanut Butter & Jelly Swirl" that I'd brought back. (Americans, you can't get such nonsense in this country, but my mother, who worked as a chef for American kids for years, loves peanut butter & jelly sandwiches!) Of course, I was quick to show her my holiday photos and videos on it, extol its virtues and explain that she was probably the most advanced pensioner in London by having one, but for the most part, she was unfazed and put it down in a corner.

A few days later however, I walked in on her with it sitting on her lap. She had the Google app open. I asked her what she was doing and she said she'd tried to get her email using 'the button,' but it was set up for me, not for her, so she was trying to get it another way. I realised at that point that the iPad was still configured for my use, so I spent a short while purging it of all traces of my holiday. I reset it to default and loaded the handful of applications I thought she'd be interested in: BBC news, an internet radio player, Skype, Epicurious, Jamie's 5 Minute Meals, Accuweather, and so on. I set the calender, contacts and mail apps to sync with her Gmail, and then added a small number of other things that I thought I would probably use when I'm visiting (Marvel Comics, Facebook, TwitBird). Finally, I loaded all of her photos from the desktop PC (several thousand) and a few of her favourite albums (the Beatles, Julio Iglesias, Paco Peña), gave it back and left her to it.

A little while later she said to me, "That thing changes my words! I can't send mail with it because it makes no sense!" Of course, she was referring to the auto correct & completion functions. As I said, English is not my mum's first language - she's Spanish - and her writing skills are not great. She reads and writes phonetically, so any thing she writes in English is always quite interesting. Recently, while I was away in the USA, she sent an email to me describing how great the weather was:

"hallo, is wed,and the most beautiful morning so am prep ear for water,the allotment.today it will be perhaps the Hooters day of the yer .but very wet for the weekend."

For those who don't speak Spanglish, the mail translates as follows:

"Hello, it's Wednesday and it's a most beautiful morning, so I'm preparing to water the allotment. Today it will perhaps be the hottest day of the year, but it will become very wet this weekend."

Aside from the comedic value of "the hottest day of the year" being described as "the Hooters day of the year," you can see that my mum's typing and punctuation skills are not great. In fact, this was a particularly good message from her! As far as she's concerned, her words make sense. And, if you read it in the voice of a little old Spanish lady, they do. They also make sense to a spell checker. In fact, I suspect she spell checked this particular one and hence we end up with words like "prep ear" instead of "prepare."

But, like predictive text on a mobile phone, auto-complete only really works well if you have a good command of the language in the first place. If your spelling is atrocious, then you end up with all sorts of junk. So I turned that off, along with auto-correct and the double space/period short cut function.

A few more days passed and once again I asked her how she was coping with it. "Is OK" she said with a smile. It took her a while to figure out how much pressure to put on the screen - how long to leave her finger on it - when she swipes and activates icons. There is no tactile response, so at first she would hold down her finger on an app icon and the screen would do that wobbly-interface thing_. (Can that be turned off, by the way?) But she soon adjusted. Now she's reading her emails, listening to the radio, checking recipes, and enjoying her digital photos. She uses it in bed, in the kitchen, whilst watching TV and even on the balcony.

She's typing a bit better with it, but she's still not 100% happy with the keyboard. That doesn't surprise me. She's a two finger typist at best and it took her a while to learn to use a regular physical keyboard. The fact that the virtual keyboard doesn't have a number pad and changes the way you access the symbol characters is a bit confusing for her at the moment. But I'm sure she'll get there. The last time I asked her if she needed any help, she told me to leave her alone so she could explore the thing for herself.

Told!

This weekend my aunt was visiting and my mum was very quick to give her a demo. They spent a large part of Saturday evening reminiscing over family photos, surfing the net and drinking whiskey. Yup, that's right, surfing the net. I'm expecting a phone call from my cousins any time soon complaining that they are now expected to splash out big bucks for an iPad. But that's OK, they are all far better off than me.

I'd like to end with a question for you all....

Would your parent, or even grandparent, want an iPad? Would they prefer a regular PC or laptop? Or would they rather just leave technology the hell alone...?

Next: The not-so-good bits.