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Mom’s iPad – a year and a bit in review.

For those who’ve read here before, I’m completing my tedious technical look at my Mom dealing with her new iPad. I’m not sure if anyone else has found it fascinating but as an IT person I find it interesting and it gave me some insights… but it’s also been quite interesting from a psychological point of view to examine the different usages through the different generations using the iPad.

If you’ve missed the previous posts, it began with why my Mom needs an iPad, seriously began with Moms iPad day one, further investigation happened with Mom’s iPad one month in, and mostly came to a close in Mom’s iPad 2ish months in.  It’s been well over a year now so I thought I’d mention the changes.

When Mom got her iPad, there were 2 others in my family. Hers, mine and the surprise one purchased for my nephew. That may seem a lot but said nephew was to be using it as a computer for University. Mom was replacing a computer, and I just wanted one. :)

Over a year down the track and I strongly suspect that Mom is actually the reason this number has grown drastically, primarily through her sheer enthusiasm for her iPad and the fact that she constantly demonstrates that it’s so damn easy to use. There were 7 iPads (and one NOT an iPad tablet but that’s another story) sitting about the house at xmastime.

System changes

Since I wrote the original entries there has been a significant update (iOS5) which addressed many of the concerns I had at that point. Most notable are the out of the box experience (no computer connection now), Photo management, and printing. Purchasing items is still a pain and a little confusing… especially with books, music, apps, and now magazines all sharing the same account balance but a completely different purchasing experience. Still, end result is a huge win for this update and it’s made it a much more “complete computer” than an attachment to a “proper desktop”.

Group dynamics

There’s no doubt that the iPad changes things in social settings, however that change was there the moment people wanted to consume any media. Sitting round a TV, and radio, or even a newspaper will change social dynamics. While the iPad tends to be a solo activity and does cut you off from conversation, it doesn’t have to be that way… and certainly can make for more social interactions.

Over this last xmas in our family house, there was a great deal of showing photos, sharing funny emails & articles, playing games together (pass and play & online games) alongside the usual discussions.  The kids will gather together over a single iPad playing games or drawing pictures together with a minimum of fuss. We had a mass words with friends session on one day… then another way we decided on an idevice free just for completeness. Overall we had a great social xmas that was only enhanced by the ability to bring some digital fun and sharing along with it.

Support

I’ve mentioned before the lack of support that’s needed for the iPad mainly due to the reasonably intuitive interface (and I’ve pointed out my issues with this in past posts) but as more of my Moms friends and family have the iPad or iPhones/iPod touches, everyone helps each other with the little things. Before whenever there was a computer problem on anyones machine in the family they’d call the regular “tech guys”, basically my brother and I, to solve the problem. Now various other family members are way better at some app specific issues than I ever will be. Support in some instances has even become some quality time together… which as someone who has done support I find mildly weird.

In conclusion

I have no doubts that the iPad was the perfect device for my Mom. In a year or twos time there may be something equally awesome by another manufacturer, but the iPad came out at just the right time for my Mom and she’s never looked back. It let her catch up with the electronic revolution that was slipping away from her, and allows her to stay in touch with friends and family much better than she’s been able to in the past.

I’m heading over to the US for a unknown period of time and I’m more than confidant I can leave here safe in the knowledge that Mom will be in constant communication with me, and be able to solve any problems she encounters with just herself and friends, without the need for her usual “tech guys”.

Thanks for sticking with the tale. It’s been fun to experience.

Posted 18 January 2012 † timmie § Apple § Behaviour § Geeky ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

State of the blog

For the curious or those actually following here, I’ve recently had an extended hiatus. I’ve been had some fairly significant life changes of late and while this blog is still important to me, I’m afraid family and work commitments won the day.

While things are still changing, there is time to return to this blog now and it does still mean a lot to me. Again, apologies for the lack of updates. Stay tuned for future updates.

Posted 15 January 2012 † timmie § admin ‡ Comments (0) °

Moms iPad – 2ish months in.

So once again, another (probably final) update on my Mom using an iPad. For those who missed the saga and feel they may want to give their relatives iPads, be sure to read why my Mom needs an iPad, Moms iPad day one, and Mom’s iPad one month in. Again, I apologise for the cross-cultural Mom/Mum confusion. I get complaints either way but the Americans are louder (Joke!).

First and foremost, after 2ish months the novelty of the iPad has begun to wear off, but the iPad has become such a regular use tool that it’s a rare day that goes by without it coming out for use. The iPad travels with my Mum everywhere in her little tote bag and she loves to pull it out to write a list or have a quick game of solitaire.

She’s also one of Apple’s best salespeople as she loves to talk about it when people ask (which they often do). Her very honest “I don’t know much about that but look at this!” when people ask her techy questions is a refreshing change from people who usually gush about their tech toys, and usually gets much more interest.

There are, however, a few outstanding niggles beyond the ones I mentioned in my previous post (printing – still an issue, and a few other niggles) and once again some nice surprises.

Photo importing

Mum has a nice little compact digital camera that often comes out at events, so we decided that a camera connection kit was warranted. Sadly, things had been happening and I hadn’t had the chance to show her how to use the kit.

So the other day when I wasn’t around she opened up her connection kit, figured out the cables (she’s never opened up the camera before so she used the USB version and her cable) and got it all working on her own without any instruction… well nearly. Sadly, although it seemed to work for her, the photos never made it to the iPad and she couldn’t work out why.

A technical usability aside: The process for importing photos is: plug in camera, select photos to import by tapping (or import all), press import, wait for alert to say it’s finished. The problem is that there’s no clear indication of progress. Yes, the blue checkmarks begin to turn green (way to go for the colourblind!) but if you have more than a screens worth of images you may not see this. There is, however, a big red button saying “Stop Import” and quite sensibly my Mum saw this and thought “I’ve done with my bit of the process now, I want the iPad to be finished” so kept pressing stop import as a final step. Again, this is a very sensible choice since there was no other indication she could see of what was happening (she had more than a screen full of images).

Obviously the problem was solved quite quickly with technical instruction, but there’s been so much thought into not having to instruct on most things I thought this was odd.

Photo Management

I’ve touched on this before but it’s exceedingly frustrating long term. There’s just no way without a computer to sort or label images; and even if you do manage editing an image or metadata somehow in a third party app it just adds a new image.

My Mum now has a huge amount of images on her iPad in one big lump. No way of grouping or even labeling those images. Also, some of the images have incorrect timestamps so they’re not even in correct order. She also often wants to email a batch of 6 or seven to someone but that can’t be done either. Batch deleting would be a nice option as well.

Of course, she could do this on my Dad’s laptop, to which her iPad is synced, but being that this is HER only computer that’s not really a good option. In addition, the point of Mum having an iPad is so she doesn’t have to use another computer.

All up it’s all a bit of a mess.

Purchasing items

Theres a bit of initial fear in most people with any of the iStores on the iPad that it’ll be too easy to accidentally run up huge credit card bills. To be honest, knowing the temptation of the App store it’s not an unfounded fear. We have finally worked through that fear and we’ve been getting ready to make her first iPurchases on the iPad.

There’s a problem though. It’s a mess too.

You have the App store, just for buying new applications… and updating existing ones for free. You have the iTunes store for Music, TV, Movies, Streams…. and free podcasts, and free iTunesU content. Then finally you have the iBooks store… conveniently hidden within the iBooks app where you need to know to look for it, and not a standalone store like the two others… oh, and iBooks is also the place to read your own PDF documents. All three of those stores have different ways of presenting information (similar, but different) and each have different places to show free content (Mixed in for App store, podcasts and iTunesU for iTunes, and a separate free section for iBooks).

Just explaining why some things are free and others aren’t, or why all application updates are free, is a little tricky. Add to this the vastly different ways third party apps do in app purchases and it becomes a nightmare to try and explain.

Personally, I would love to see a single iStore Content app through which all purchases were made and passed to the relevant app to make it much easier for the novice who wouldn’t necessarily understand the difference.

Performance

Another point is performance. Mom’s iPad is the wifi only version as she has no real need for 3G, but the area she lives in has broadband speeds that clock in at 256k on a really good day. For mail and mostly text based web pages this is quite liveable…. but the iPad certainly looses some of it’s “magical” sheen when maps and iStores load at walking pace.

I’m fully aware this isn’t a common complaint for many parts of the world… but it’s worth keeping in mind the speed of access if you are thinking of provisioning your family with an iPad. If they’re in a slow access area you may consider getting 3G as an option for them.

Final Notes

I’ll likely finish this series with this episode, but I thought I’d give a few final summary notes.

Despite my initial fears that it would be left unused like other technologies she’s tried, Mom is carrying her iPad everywhere and loves it. She’s consistently trying new things and determined to try to solve problems herself before calling me. She’s also pleasantly surprised by the amount of stuff she can do without internet access, and is often typing lists during meetings to email later.

Overall, I’d highly recommend the iPad to anyone not comfortable with technology assuming there’s someone who can give them a quick overview and assist with initial setup (and the Apple stores will do this for anyone nearby). The intuitive nature of the device, along with the locked down operating system (an issue for some geeks, but a bonus for many) makes it… well… just work.

Posted 26 August 2010 † timmie § Apple § Geeky § life § training § Usability ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , , ,

Working without a net – A geek, 2 weeks, and just an iPad.

My laptop had a serious problem and the poor overworked thing needed to go into the apple store for a week or so for a seriously overdue luxury spa treatment. This looks like a job for iPad! (dun dun DUH!) I felt it was was a good opportunity to see exactly how much work could actually be done on the iPad without having a proper computer available.

First, lets set the parameters. The tasks I require from a computer are as follows in order of randomness:-

  • Web surfing
  • Email
  • Reading my news (via rss)
  • Blogging
  • Occasional Gaming
  • Light photo manipulation
  • Some coding
  • Random video watching
  • Office stuff (presentations, text docs, spreadsheets)
  • Support for friends and family
  • Printing

In addition I need to be able to type very fast while sitting comfortably to be able to work.
As long as that tiny list is covered, I can work perfectly fine without any problems. Should be a piece of cake, huh?

So two weeks later, lets see how I got on. I’ll deal with the list in a moment, but lets deal with the last one first, working comfortably with a keyboard.

A great deal of time was spent looking at the various iPad stands on offer, and eventually came to the conclusion that there’s nothing that suits me perfectly. Consequently, I lashed right out and spent $2 Australian on a cheap acrylic plate stand… which has turned out to be the best iPad accessory I’ve purchased. It folds flat, holds the iPad vertically or horizontally, I’m really not concerned about breaking it (i was thinking of buying a few just in case), and the clear acrylic with the iPad looks awesome! With the addition of an Apple bluetooth keyboard (I’ve tried others, and this works best for me) I have something that feels like a laptop without actually being one, and is 1 million billion times lighter than lugging my laptop around (I measured).

The proof is in the image below. The setup looks great. The wine is an essential addition.
A cute pic of an ipad on a plate stand with an ipad in the background

I should comment that working on my lap works relatively OK, but on a proper keyboard I can bash out 110-120 WPM, but on the virtual keyboard I’m down to about 80. Still respectable but I feel frustrated. The advantage of the virtual keyboard is of course that it’s completely lit so long passenger rides become much more productive. Anyway, continuing on to the list.

Web Surfing
Perfect. It’s actually got me out of the bad habit of keeping 50 million tabs open, and instead just focusing on the things I need done. Those pages I want to read later go to the awesome Instapaper (which if you’ve not tried, you should do immediately). Instapaper’s excellent iPad app makes this even easier so that when I’m browsing and see something interesting that I’d like to read later I just tap the button and it’s off magically saved for later reading.

Unfortunately right now theres a few sites that still cause me issues and certainly file handling with a browser (like uploading eBay pix, and using the wordpress admin fully) is mostly impossible on the iPad. It’s a tough call though as the browsing experience is certainly nicer on the iPad.
Possible on the iPad? Yes!
Better than the mac? I think it will be soon once the last remaining holdout sites catch up to the rest of the internet.

Email
Almost perfect, though the solution is coming soon. Email really is quite nice on the iPad, my only criticisms are that I use multiple mailboxes, and this isn’t supported until iOS4. In addition I’d love to be able to apply labels to my mails but that’s not critical to me as I tend to use the inbox zero method and file as necessary (If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, look it up).
Possible on the iPad? Yes!
Better than the mac? I think it will be when iOS4 comes to the iPad (from my iPhone experiences).

News via RSS
If you’re not clued up on RSS newsreaders, skip this bit. On my mac I was really getting into using google readers quite nice web front end and was disappointed to find it broken on the iPad (and still is to my knowledge). Thankfully for a small app store fee some amazing companies have created great RSS readers that work beautifully on the iPad. My personal favourite is Reeder which syncs nicely with Google reader and does some nice caching to make things nice and quick. It also has ties to all the nice web services that I’ve grown to love (including the aforementioned Instapaper).
Possible on the iPad? Yes!
Better than the mac? For me, yes! Faster with better links through to other online services.

Blogging
Blogging is certainly possible right now on the iPad but not at all using the built in web interfaces. WordPress have put out a client which works to a degree of you only do plain text but I’ve certainly been delving into my outdated html knowledge to write this post (though it’s surprising how quickly it comes back). I miss having access to a wysiwig editor, and some constructive way to deal with image uploading which doesn’t just paste them at the end of a post, but it’s not there yet.

However it’s certainly possible to do, and with some services like Squarespace having native wysiwig iPhone apps (soon to be iPad), you could certainly use the iPad for your primary mobile blogging tool. Especially if your blog is primarily text based.

For myself, I find that I tend to pre-type a lot of my blog posts in simplenote anyway and use the excellent textexpander (not currently working with WordPress for iPad) to assist with making my HTML coding quicker.
Possible on the iPad? Yes.
Better than the mac? Not yet. Clients needs more work to make this easier.

Occasionally gaming
From the outset I’ll state that the iPad isn’t an Xbox, or Playstation. It’s also not going to run things that your PC or Mac can run like World of Warcraft. Surprisingly though, there’s some very creative games that make exceedingly good use of the accelerometer and touchscreen to make gaming on the iPad surprisingly fun. Driving games are great as you feel you’re immersed into the wheel, strategy games work surprisingly well with the pinch zoom and swipe to get around, and there’s some quite good MMORPG’s here and on the way.

Also, a huge number of flash web games have already been ported to the iPad which work very well, but with the upcoming release of Farmville for iPad and the amazing number of tower defense games on the iPad you’ve really got no reason to complain.
Possible on the iPad? Yes!
Better than the mac? As a direct mac replacement – No. As a quite good platform for a new breed of games – Yes!

Photo manipulation
From the onset I’ll say that I know I’m not going to be able to all my photoshop tasks, image sorting and tagging on the iPad. However for something quick while away, and in combination with the camera connection kit, it’s surprisingly useful. I use photogene which does a great deal of the main cropping, straitening and simple filters and redeye reduction, and it lets you upload to twitter or email (no flickr yet though that’s possible through email).

My HUGE gripe with images on the iPad is the sheer lack of any organization ability. Apple currently have complete control over the photo groups and metadata, and 3rd party apps can only read data and create new images. No modifications on existing photos are possible.
Possible on the iPad? Yes, for light editing and uploading.
Better than the mac? Not even close yet. It really needs 3rd party access to the image database to make it work (or Apple to get it working properly themselves).

Some coding
I do a little mucking about with xcode and some automation scripting. While I can do some of the core work by typing this out in text on the iPad, and some UX concepts in the excellent drawing apps, It’s not really a possibility as yet.
Possible on the iPad? No.
Better than the mac? No.

Random video watching
A surprisingly pleasant experience. The speaker is good enough for most circumstances and watching videos, TV, and podcasts is great. While there’s some good paid content available easily on the iTunes store, there’s also some very good third party media outlets with free apps (mostly American at the moment though I expect that to change soon). Lastly if you do have other video files, then as long as you can turn them into MP4 files (which Handbrake does very well). Airsharing for iPad is also great if you have a nice big media server somewhere and don’t want to copy all the content over to the iPad.
Possible on the iPad? Yes!
Better than the mac? Than a Mac on it’s own, absolutely. Watching in bed is nice. Than a dedicated media server connected to a HDTV, possibly not though it’s still a close call.

Office stuff (presentations, text docs, spreadsheets)
I paid the US$30 to pick up Pages, Numbers and Keynote, which was a definite must have for me. The whole file management import/export thing is a little frustrating, and while I’m happy to pass PDF’s to non iWork users, it does tend to be a little frustrating for them. I’ve picked up the email workflow when working on a shared document with iWork users though and it seems to work OK.

Certainly I prefer having the multitouch interactivity of the documents and if they’re just for me I Love it! I constantly find myself trying to touch sections of my laptop screen when I go back to it.

Apparently MS Office for iPad is on the way for those who are wedded to that way of working assuming it turns out any good.
Possible on the iPad? Yes!
Better than the mac? For own usage – Much better. For sharing documents – no.

Support for friends and family
As a geeky member of a large family, I often find myself conscripted to do support for family and friends whether I like it or not. There are some excellent tools available to assist with this. I personally use iTeleport (formally Jaadu) for screen sharing to both macs and PCs (and linux but they tend not to need support). It can work with a google login to let you access the other machines quite easily from anywhere, and being in the middle of nowhere but still using 3G to do support is surprisingly satisfying.

For other support tools there’s a variety of server monitors, SSH clients, network check tools and other items of that nature, and a few server administration apps that make a sysadmins job much easier. Gotomeeting has a client for iPad should you need to join in on a conference somewhere random as well. Overall, as a quick way of supporting remote users (including friends and family) it’s pretty good. As a replacement for a full machine when doing support it’s lacking but certainly not impossible.
Possible on the iPad? Yes!
Better than the mac? Not really, but the small profile and 3G access means you can have it with you in places you wouldn’t normally have a laptop.

Printing
A common complaint about the iPad is the lack of printing. There’s plenty of websites detailing workarounds from email solutions, clients on a static machine that print for you, or even watched folders linked into dropbox and the like.

Thankfully I have access to one of the newer epson printers and have downloaded the EpsonPrinter app. While it’s not perfect, it’s certainly a huge change. Right now it can only print images from your library, but it’s easy enough to do a screen grab and print that directly. The page setup also leaves a little to be desired. I’m impressed with the direction that they’re going, but I’d love to see an update or too, and it would certainly help epson to sell a heap more printers so they’ve got the incentive to do so.
Possible on the iPad? Sort of, though it’s a little bit of a kludge.
Better than the mac? Not even nearly. I do hope this will change soon.

Apps I’m still waiting on iPad updates for to improve the experience:-
- Pastebot. Though it’s workable in the current form.
- Skype. C’mon Skype, pull your finger out.
- Facebook. Same again. What’s the story? It’s the perfect platform for light social networking.
- WordPress. As mentioned above, I’d love an update to give a little better experience.

Must have apps to make the iPad a work machine for me:-
- Instapaper. An absolute must have for me.
- Photogene. The best photo manipulation app I’ve found so far.
- Simplenote + Notational velocity. This is a combo that means that I have any notes I take instantly on my mac and backed up as well (notational velocity is a Mac app).
- DropBox. Having ALL my essential files available is a must have for me.
- Pastebot. Allowing many many levels of copy and paste certainly allows for much easier blogging.
- Text expander. For typing lots of repetitive strings, text expander is essential.
- The iWork suite. Mentioned above, it turns it into a proper office machine.
- Reeder. I’m an RSS news junkie so I can’t pass without this.

Other annoyances
Having a bluetooth keyboard was a must have considering I tend to write these long boring diatribes. I have, however, been caught out by the random keyboard activation locking me out of the iPad while it was in my bag.

Also, a lot of the “magicalness” of the device really does rely on good fast internet access. I’m currently at the extreme range of DSL where I am so it’s slowed down to just over modem speed which reduces the magic to a mere “meh” in most situations. Certainly streaming video suffers significantly.

Lastly, the frustration of flash based websites that haven’t even bothered to throw up an alternate “sorry” site is getting a little annoying. Thankfully these sites are becoming few and far between.

In conclusion…
It’s certainly possible to use the iPad as a completely workable replacement machine. Some thought needs to go into backing up (this requires a machine right now) and printing, but these aren’t show stoppers (for me at least) and see my previous post on how I’d like to see a house set up. Also, some things like downloading podcasts and the like are significantly more difficult on the iPad but again, not impossible.

Assuming there’s a computer somewhere in your house that you can sync with then it’s definitely a workable main machine. For those following my Mom’s exploits with the iPad you’ll know that for the novice user it’s more than acceptable, and I’m probably pickier because I have more demands from a computer.

Posted 05 July 2010 † timmie § Apple § Behaviour § Geeky § life § Thinky § Usability ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: , , , , ,

Dear tech reporters…

  • A product has a possibility of success even if that one key feature you want isn’t included.
  • It’s really unlikely that a product is a (insert previous favourite product) killer. The things that will kill a product are a lack of features that people want. It’s assumed that if a product is top ranking currently it’s got those features and another product may dent the market a little but won’t kill it.
  • Guessing what the market will do or trying to predict a company failing is a sure way to get large amounts of egg on your face.
  • Seriously, quit with the link baiting. It’s fun the first few times to point and laugh because you’re idiot for assuming something stupid, but after a while it gets very obvious you’re just doing it for hits… which makes you look an even bigger idiot and not “net smart”.
  • Stop assuming that just because (insert rival tech writer) likes a product that they’re paid off or “just a fanboy”. It was funny in the 90′s. We’re beyond that now.
  • Please please please just report on the fricken technology and tell us what you think of it as honestly as you can. Seriously. We’d love to hear it for a change.

*My apologies to the two or three good tech writers out there reading this, but the rest of them are seriously dragging your profession through the mud

Posted 30 June 2010 † timmie § Behaviour ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , ,

Mums iPad one month in

Following up on my earlier posts about my Mom’s iPad, I thought I’d do a one month in followup to see how she’s getting on. If you’ve not read the earlier posts please see part 1 (why she needs an iPad) and Part 2 (iPad day 1), but be sure to read the addendum about my mom to clarify a few points about her.

I’ve previously mentioned how much a device like this is uniquely suited to any family member who has previously avoided technology for exactly the reasons we love it. Much as I’m in love with my iPad, one month in it does seem to be perfectly fitting that niche for the wannabe silver surfer set (lets be slightly honest here and say the “luddite” word). Mostly, those of the generation that missed computers but whose friends are all making attempts to reconnect that way are the ideal customers. Email and the web are remarkably efficient communication mediums and they often realize that organizing events with friends, clubs, social groups becomes much more convenient.

So, one month in, what have I noticed.

In general, things are going really well. For the most part she’s using it as one would expect to use a computer. Email, web, documents, images, games, all with no real problems at all. However, there is a few outstanding issues, and some pleasant surprises, that I’ll document below.

Support

First and foremost I’ve noticed a distinct lack of support calls. Where previously from my mom and others I’ve had frequent support calls for little things that I’ve shown them in the past. The main issue being that they’ve been fearful to “just try” the things that they actually know are correct for fear of breaking something.

From day one, I drilled into Mom that there’s nothing she could do to break it (software wise) and it would never charge her money for things without asking for her password first.

Consequently, I’ve had 2 calls and 2 direct requests (I happened to be sitting beside her) total in the last month. One of those calls involved copy and paste which I’ll happily admit is a little confusing to someone not familiar with computers. The other call I was unavailable at the time, and 10 minutes later I got a call back saying “never mind, I’ve worked it out”… something that previously wouldn’t have happened. The direct requests were both for slightly confusing concepts, the first was the press and hold for accents on characters, the second was for importing images from her camera (and being that she actually had to borrow my camera connection kit for that it’s no real surprise.

In addition, we’ve set up calendar reminders to let her battery charge run to zero and backup to a computer once a month and the first one came and went with no problems.

Bottom line is that I suspect I’ll have a remarkably reduced level of support to deal with which has got to be a good thing.

Printing

One big issue so far is the lack of printing. Epson have come out with an app to let you print but it only works with newer wireless printers and only prints images so it’s not really an option. I’m aware that there are other printing solutions but they usually require a direct printer connection to a PC or Mac… being that our printer is plugged into a Airport Express that’s not an option.

Currently I’m testing a solution on the spare machine to mail the documents to an email address which picks them up with automator and prints the attachments if there are any or prints the email if there’s none, but there’s some bugs with it right now. Consequently we’re mailing it to my Dad’s macbook for printing at the moment.

I should also note that printing has gone down significantly since the iPad. Previously if an important/useful/vaguely humorous email came through it would be printed for both Mom and Dad to read. Now Dad forwards the email to Mom and vice versa. I know it’s a simple thing but when I look at the vast amount of cute cat emails lying around the house it makes me happy.

Portrait mode

The weird thing I’ve noticed is that she very rarely uses the iPad in landscape mode. As a child of the computer and TV generation landscape is my default mode. It actually slightly annoys me when I can’t switch to landscape in some apps, and having a list to the left beside the main document has become my main way of viewing text. In addition, I can barely use the portrait mode keyboard because it just doesn’t have enough space for me to feel comfortable typing. I will switch to portrait occasionally for apps that work better in that mode, but I far prefer landscape.

Mom, on the other hand, is way more comfortable in portrait. I strongly suspect it’s due to an attachment to the paper medium that this is the case but even for apps that I would expect landscape (solitaire for example) she still seems to prefer the portrait.

After noticing this, I realized that most of my family who were born in the computer generation do tend to stick to the landscape, whereas the older generations tend to like the portrait. It’s something that app developers should consider when thinking about their audience.

In Summary

From someone who could barely use her email (my brother helpfully set up gmail for her when it first came out), my Mom is now an email junkie. She looks things up on the web with no problem (and is slightly frustrated by flash only sites in Australia). She picks up the iPad instead of looking for a crossword puzzle. She’s loving the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) app recently released to stream recent shows and news, and she’s basically doing most of the things that my generation do on the computer without any issues whatsoever.

Ok, there’s some exceptions, I’ve not got her on facebook yet and am a little wary to do so. I think I’ll at least wait until they bring out the iPad app for it. But in general for an effective luddite (who is exceedingly intelligent otherwise) she’s taken to the iPad like a fish to water and loves it.

End result, thumbs up all round Apple. Fix your printing and the initial login process and you’ll have the silver surfer set nailed. :)

Posted 30 June 2010 † timmie § Apple § Behaviour § training § Usability ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , , , , ,

Focus

Work on any slightly tedious task and your brain will find many ways to distract itself. Listening out for a good conversation, a tv show, watching a critter run through a tree outside. Forcing yourself to focus on the task at hand is something with which those of us brought up in the 30 second attention span generation need help.

Sadly the technology of now, the great savior of the future, is one of those things that drags you in multiple directions at once. Whenever a new toy, social network, or gimmick turns up it quickly becomes one more thing to distract you from that vital task that needs to be finished. I’d like to think as a rational human being that I can force myself to simply ignore those distractions and just pay attention to the task at hand, but this often proves quite difficult when the task is dragging on a bit and there’s that cool new website that everyone is talking about!

Of course the simple solution on a computer is to disable all the bells and whistles and just launch the task at hand, but in the back of your mind you’re wondering if you’ve missed that crucial tweet, that important wedding announcement, or that flashmob invite that is essential to your day… apparently.

Personally, I’ve never been good at this. I’m fantastic at what I do if my task relies on quick paced problem solving, thinking on your feet, or generating rapid fire solutions to problems… but give me a tedious task that doesn’t interest me to perform and I’ll leap at any chance to do something different.

Weirdly enough, for me the solution has been the latest toy. Enter the iPad. The very features that many in the press derided are the ones that help me to work the best. The fact that it can’t multitask means if I begin a spreadsheet, a presentation, or even a blog post, I tend to stick with it until the deed is done.

Right now I’m on a 3.5 hour bus journey. While I’d like to say this is a perfect laptop opportunity, I’ve previously found myself firing up a doc editor and fiddling with margins… noticing that I can’t save the doc in the document structure I’d like and reorganizing my folders… getting frustrated with the music and rearranging all my playlists… then giving up and watching a DVD till the battery runs out (or yes, actually reading a book).

My normal routine on long journeys would be to begin writing with the best of intentions, so I did this on the iPad for the first time (firing up the awesome Simplenote to get me started), but weirdly I found with no distractions, in fact with nothing but the text in front of me (well, and the time and battery level but you get the point), I could just type and very little distracted me. Even the uncomfortable confines of the bus faded away due to the level of focus I was achieving. Being that I didn’t have the usual distractions of format, filestore, or constant flickering status messages, I could focus totally on the task at hand and finish that post then move onto something else but the initially intended task has been completed distraction free. My focus has remained intact.

While I’m fully aware that I’ll still only work on things that vaguely interest me, at least in the process I won’t leave a trail of uncompleted tasks that have been left by the wayside by the desperate need to contribute to the latest hash tag, ironically reorganize my todo lists to be more efficient, or a battle of taunts in some obscure forum that must be answered before the descent into Godwins law. While I may do these things, I suspect from now on they may have my complete and undivided attention.

I should also note that this entire post was written on the virtual keyboard of the iPad whilst on a bus using simplenote then copying and pasting into WordPress for iPad.

I’d love to hear from other iPad users with similar experiences.

Posted 17 June 2010 † timmie § Apple § Behaviour ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , , , ,

Mom’s iPad. Day one.

Many of you may recall why my Mom needs an iPad, so I thought I’d do a follow up now that she’s had it for a day or so on how she’s getting on, how I set her up, and what she loves and hates in the hope that your relative may benefit from my experience somehow.

Once again, for clarification, my Mom is very very smart as I’ve explained here and has used a computer in the past for recipes, and occasional games of solitaire. She has, in the past, also been known to send an email but it’s never been an easy task so it doesn’t get done often. We’ve had many experiments of trying to get her on netbooks and such but they’ve always proved to be a struggle mainly because of her infrequent use.

So following is step by step of her experiences with the iPad.

Opening the box

I was away when the box arrived (actually I was in the queue for another iPad for my nephew as it happened), but she had been excited about it arriving all morning and kept checking the window. At this point she really had no idea what she’d do with it but felt it could be the thing for her to start her internet world properly.

When it arrived, she ripped open the box, pulled it out in all it’s beautiful presentation. Looked for the manual… and found a small piece of card with a few pointers on where the on off switch were and such. So on to switching on the device and of course at this point she was stuck as it needed connection to another computer and she initially thought it just had to be my computer.

As an aside, I’ve mentioned my distress with the initial setup in a previous post but I’d like to reiterate how annoying this is for a computer newcomer. In addition, the fact that there’s not really even a cheap paper user guide included… and even the electronic guide which is free on the iBooks store requires the download of iBooks then the download of the guide… something novices won’t necessarily be able to do without instruction.

Assuming that a) I needed to set it up and b) It would need charging as most battery things do… she waited for me as she knew I’d be back in an hour or so.

First use

On arriving home, I did the initial device registration, added her iTunes account info to my dad’s laptop, and set up her gmail on the iPad. Now normally when I’d do this sort of family tech support (of the kind I’m sure you’re all aware) I’d be left to my own devices and left alone… however this time Mum was so excited that she was watching every step of the way and asking questions. It would have been nice for Apple to have answered those questions (which they would have done if this was in a store) but sadly there was no helpful popup help as we went along so it was up to me. Then I handed it to her and let her have a play explaining that I’d run through some things after she’d had a bit of a go.

For the first 5 minutes she was swiping, launching apps, poking at things (I assured her she couldn’t do anything bad on it just yet) and seeing what she could do… then she promptly asked me to show her email and the game was afoot!

First instruction

I began by explaining what the external buttons and ports were (with the exception of rotation lock, I held off on that until we were learning our first app). The fact that the iPad has so few external buttons and ports is a HUGE bonus for training as once they get the idea of the on/off switch and the home button they’re fine on the basics of most apps… it’s all bonus from there.

Another aside: out of all the external buttons, the “Home” was the hardest for her to understand. Volume is straight forward and the audio and dock ports were straight forward. She even picked up the idea of rotation lock immediately. However with the home button she kept looking for a close window button on apps, and couldn’t grasp it for some time. I attribute this to the notion that geeks are so use to the concept of an OS that going back to the “finder” or whatever you’d like to call the equivalent is fairly straight forward for us. For most people “the internet” is explorer or google and the whole OS and App architecture is a little alien.

Proceeding from that we drifted into an overview of the built in apps. There was some confusion on iTunes vs App Store. In addition I’d loaded a few apps which I realised was a mistake during training… but the solitaire and epicurious I loaded have been big faves since so I’m not complaining. Weirdly enough, where normally you’d get some glazing going on in this overview (hence the need for repetition and follow up to ensure understanding) she was focused the whole way and asking app specific questions to the point that I had to reign her in so we could head back to our destination… email.

Email

My Mom understands the basic idea of email. That it works like a digital letter. She suffers from the same issue that I’ve encountered many times in assuming that the address is fixed to a specific location rather than something that could live in many and multiple places… so she was worried at one point when we sent an email to my sisters computer address instead of her iPhone address and was worried she wouldn’t see it for hours (she has both on both as it happens) but that’s something that will come in time.

Consequently, email was basically explaining how the software worked rather than the concept as such.

There were two points that presented issues with email on the iPad: icons and rotation.

Icons: I know what a swirly back arrow in email means as contextually that makes sense to be “reply”. She doesn’t have that geeky concept to fall back on. The file folder icon makes some sense… however there’s no way to make new folders on the iPad which presents some problems for her. Currently I’ve promised to set up any that are needed… which is something I would have liked to be able to avoid. Trash actually makes sense so that’s a start… but the little checkbox for “New mail” looks like a done to me and my Mom agrees.

Rotation: For someone who is new to computing, completely changing the functionality of something based on it’s rotation is a little daunting and finding her way back to new messages presented quite an issue the first time it happened. I’m not sure how this could have been handled better but it is quite jarring from a novice point of view.

Safari

After email we moved into web browsing (as this and email were the two tasks she really wanted to do on the iPad). Safari was the big winner for my Mom. Very little issues… with the main one being the concept of different pages. She expect all things to open in the same page so when a bad website keeps opening new windows it causes issues which shouldn’t be there. We’ve barely encountered any flash so that’s not been an issue.

I’ve previously set up a few links for her on other (failed) computer attempts with her but quickly found her googling lots of stuff and typing in addresses she saw on the TV or found in her favourite magazines (ironically enough).

Keyboard

I was genuinely surprised how quickly she took to the keyboard. She loves it and considers it a way better keyboard to any of the netbooks that she’s tried in the past. She can type quickly and accurately (she was a typist in her day for a while before she became a teacher) and has been emailing like a demon since she got the iPad.

I think the biggest issue is the contextual rearrangement and dynamic naming of the “return” key depending of the circumstances. Having it change from a “return” to a “go” to a “done” to a “search” is actually just frustrating rather than helpful. And while I personally find the addition of a “.com” key on address aware text fields, Mom just finds this frustrating. I would think a toggle in preferences to turn this off would be helpful for her.

Other apps

She very quickly found the free version of solitaire that I put on there, and it’s become a fast favourite… as has epicurious for looking up recipes.Weirdly enough, I’ve not used epicurious too much myself (being not in my own house currently) and I quickly found that her knowledge of the app outstripped my own and she was off jotting down recipes for herself (she would print them… but we know how that turns out on the iPad).

I was supposed to run her second training session today on the next app… but instead she is off trying things and poking around occasionally asking a question followed by a very quick “oh nevermind I’ve worked it out.”

Conclusion

While I’ll follow up once more in a week or so on how she’s going, but what amazes me is that she’s getting the sense of wonder and excitement that I’ve had with technology for years but most people just don’t understand.

With the iPad, Mom is playing, exploring, occasionally gaming, communicating, but basically having FUN using the technology rather than struggling against it. This is what excites me most about the iPad as that excitement is something that I simply don’t see in people of Mom’s generation and I believe the iPad is going to bring it to them.

Mom has already offered my services several times over to train her friends who had no interest in the iPad but are now infected by her enthusiasm. I can’t say I’m thrilled with the proposal but I’m absolutely ecstatic about the outcome. :)

Posted 31 May 2010 † timmie § Apple § training § Uncategorized § Usability ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

iPad first use – Negatives

Firstly, if you’ve never been to an Apple product launch or opening… do so. It was actually a lot of fun and I’ve posted about it on my personal blog here. In my defence, I was queueing to purchase one for my Nephews 18th the next day… but that didn’t mean I wasn’t particularly geeky about it. :)

It ended up there were both positives and negatives about my first use experience and I felt I should share. Some of these are known problems. I’m going to begin with the negatives. I should also note that I’m loving my iPad, but I feel the need to rant about some of the usability issues which should have been solved before release.

Out of the box

Packaging was… as always… impeccable from apple. It looked beautiful in the box, and I quite liked the simplicity of the instruction leaflet in the box (just the basics, where’s the on switch and what the volume buttons did pretty much) was a nice change. However we all know the common wisdom about polishing items so while this was pleasant it’s certainly not a helpful description of the product. And I know this isn’t a negative but I thought I’d start by saying something nice.

Initial connections

Initial out of the box is slightly annoying. It’s been said before that it’s frustrating that it doesn’t “just work” like many apple products do. The first thing you need to do is find a computer (mac or windows) running the latest version of iTunes and connect it via USB to connect via the internet to get it started. Allow me to expand on the requirements not included to labour this point… required items are:-

  1. relatively recent PC or Mac
  2. Fairly recent operating system on said PC or mac (i’m not sure how far it goes back but I’d suspect 10.5 on the mac and perhaps XP on the PC… linux, you’re out without VMware).
  3. An installation of iTunes on said computer
  4. A USB port on said PC (I’ve not checked if it will work with USB 1, but I’d highly recommend against trying it.
  5. Time. Depending on whether you’ve owned an iPhone before this could be a decent amount.
  6. Additionally these items will need to remain available for backups and system updates for the foreseeable future

Expecting to use this as a complete replacement for a home computer is a stretch right now unless you have a good friend living nearby who can help you out.

App disasters

If you’ve had an iPhone or iPod touch connected to the machine before then you’re in for more difficulties. A little background here, I will admit that I’m an app junkie and will often download free apps to try, especially if they’re on special for a few days. My current iTunes says I have 810 iPhone, iPad and universal applications which does seem excessive. 118 of these are iPad only ones. OK. Yes. I have an App problem but I’m definitely far from the worst by a long shot. However I do know that many people have well over 100 of them sitting in iTunes.

You have the choice on first connection of either restoring an iPhone backup to your iPad or starting from scratch. Being that I’m a start from scratch kind of guy I went for the latter which was likely a mistake, but I want to use my iPad in a completely different way to the iPhone so I thought this was a good start. At this point things have problems.

For Music, Video, Podcasts, etc you have the basic choice of yes or no to syncing and if you’d like to sync just the selected or all items. There’s also a plethora of other options. Sync only unplayed/sync from playlist/from smart playlist/just one kind of video… etc. With Apps, there’s only On/Off/Only selected… and by default the “ON” selects EVERYTHING. As you can imagine, for 810 apps, this is a problem.

This would seem simple, deselect everything then start with just the ones you want. Sadly, there is no “deselect all” option and my screen only shows 11 apps at a time. Deselecting is troublesome. I did begin the deselect process and got about a quarter of the way through… then thought I’d see what happened. 3 hours later my first sync was finally complete and my iPad was adorned with more clutter than I was prepared to deal with. I should also mention that there’s no indication of how long this is going to be. There is a progress bar with no timing, and while they flash the name of the application installing on the progress bar, this is the short name, not the long name in the list so you’ve really no idea how far down in the progress it is.

Of course, as an additional problem, the iPad only shows 11 screens at a time with 20 apps per screen, so 220 apps total, which means that another 590 were there but unseen and had to be searched for if I wanted to play with them. Apps like my newly purchased Pages and Keynote… wheras doodlejump had pride of place. And don’t get me started on the shocking implementation of “app organisation” on iTunes. It’s taken me 2 days and I got under 210 apps yesterday and am finally getting the first two pages organised now.

End result, Apps=great. App organisation=rubbish. Even a simple set of smart filters for apps with a personalised star rating would help immensely. You’ve got it for music, Apple, why can’t you do it for Apps?

Which App is which?

In addition to the app issues mentioned above, there’s the issue of no distinction between iPhone apps and iPad apps. In many cases I had both but on the iPad they display as exactly the same app and no indicator to differentiate them. There have been many suggestions on improving this but currently it’s in a sorry state

Sim issues.

I purchased a 3g model of the iPad as in the future I’ll be using it to travel and would like to use it for internet access with throwaway sims as needed… however right now I only need wifi so I didn’t get a sim.

At initial registration on my laptop I was stuck in a loop where It wouldn’t allow me to finish the registration until it had warned me that there was no sim. It did this about 7 times before eventually completing the registration process.

In addition, EVERY time I restart the device (which I’m doing occasionally as I’m testing with it) It feels the need to warn me once again that I have no sim… in case I haven’t noticed the waste of space in the top of the screen constantly that says “No Sim”. I do remember that I didn’t purchase one… can we stop warning me now? A toggle in preferences would be very welcome here.

Finally

There are issues with usage, with some apps (address book and calendar need a LOT of work) and a few other bits, but those have been covered in many other places, and weirdly enough I’ll cover those in my next post about positives, mainly about the saving graces of those apps.

In conclusion

I believe there could have been a great deal of improvements to the whole initial experience. I am absolutely loving my iPad (and I’ll explain why in another post) but I would be even more ecstatic if I could have not had to fiddle with things… or given it to my mom and just said “Go play!” without having to set it up for her.

Posted 30 May 2010 † timmie § Apple § Geeky § Usability ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: , , ,

iPad overload warning

I finally received my iPad a few days ago (as did my mum) so I’m afraid the next few posts will likely be iPad related.

Being as how there should be no doubt about how I feel about it as I user interface device or as a device for the home user, not to mention it’s use in niché markets, it’s no surprise I’m raving a little about it. Despite it’s obvious flaws, I really do feel this will have a large impact on the future of computing.

Anyway, fair warning. On with the blog.

Posted 30 May 2010 † timmie § Apple § Geeky ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,