My mom’s birthday is in December and my dad told me he was planning on getting her an iPad. Naturally, I thought it was a fantastic idea!
I recommended that he just get her the 16GB WiFi version as she won’t really be needing the 3G service. The majority of time she will be using it at home either in the bedroom, living room, or kitchen.
Since this would be my mom’s first experience with an Apple product, let alone a touch-device, I was curious as to how quickly she would get accustomed to using gestures and the virtual keyboard.
After unboxing the iPad she was glued to the thing for 2 hours setting up her email accounts, browsing the web, and even checking out the App Store.
Impressions she had during the first few hours she spent with her iPad:
- Gorgeous display which made text really easy for her to read
- Touch-based gestures are awesome
Her first thoughts were that using a touch-based device was far more intuitive and natural than using a qwerty hardware-based keyboard like she was used to on her Blackberry (which she’s stuck with as it’s supplied by her employer).
One other interesting thing that I find is she no longer calls software “programs” or “applications”. She just calls them “apps” which clearly shows the power of Apple’s marketing influence. iOS devices and the process of installing “apps” has become so ubiquitous now that I think people are starting to forget what we used to call software.
Tonight I’m going over to show her some really awesome cooking apps that I think she’s going to love. She’s a great cook so I think she’ll be pretty stoked when she sees what’s available.