My mom's experience with an iPad

We've been trying to get my mom to use a computer for as long as I can remember. She tried a few times to learn how to 'get on the internet' on a PC but never really used it herself. She'd get my brother to send emails from her email account.<p>A few months back we got her an iPad. She instantly took on to it. She was emailing recipes, sharing pictures and connecting with friends and family on Facebook within the first week. She picked everything up surprisingly quickly. Seeing the iPad have this effect on a person who hasn't used a computer for more than a day or two in ther life time was shocking.

&#62;She just calls them “apps” which clearly shows the power of Apple’s marketing influence.<p>Huh? I have never owned or used an Apple product, and since I don't watch television I don't think I have ever seen an Apple commercial, and I have called programs "apps" for over a decade. It is a common term across all OSes.

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

My Mom used the iPad my Dad bought in a pretty sparring manner, mostly to look at Flickr and MLB (listening to games not on MLB Package on cable). She didn't like reading on it.<p>My brother and I got her an Apple TV for Xmas and so far that is going very well. Netflix is a hit (after we convinced her she wasn't paying for each show) and so is Flickr to see the grandchild on the big tv. It also helps all the video Dad has from iTunes.

We got an iPad for my SO's mom for her birthday. She was skeptical at first, but she loves it.<p>What are the cooking apps you're going to recommend?

My moms experience with my iPad:<p>Spent a good minute staring at the device once it was on trying to figure out where Firefox was on the screen she was on.<p>Spent a good minute, once I told her she needed to use Safari, wondering how she could bring up a keyboard to type the address she wanted into the browser.<p>Spent a good minute once she was on the sign in screen for gmail trying to figure out how to enter her username/password combo. Then she spent another 30 seconds looking for the enter key.<p>Once she was inside gmail the delete key took a mentioning, moving to the next page of her inbox was a lesson in futility, and while her fingers are substantially smaller than mine, she couldn't work the checkboxes without selecting the row above or below the one she wanted.<p>Apps? Apps? Are you kidding me! (trying to do my best Jim Mora impression)<p>While the iPad is great, and personally I love mine (doesn't hurt that I won it from a Rackspace marketing survey), it has huge way to go before it passes the Mom test.

My parents have a kitchen and living room laptop which is used to surf the web and (not so often) write emails (using Gmail) nearly all of the time. An iPad would be a perfect replacement but the big problem is Office. My parents very rarely would also like to write something or open some document and they will get annoyed pretty quickly if that doesn’t work without a hitch. They need a laptop with Microsoft Office installed, an iPad (through no fault of its own) just doesn’t provide that kind of fidelity.<p>I bet they would have loved to use an iPad in the living room and in the kitchen before they had a laptop but it just doesn’t cut it anymore. They are used to their laptop.<p>(This equally applies to other “alternative” devices. A Chrome laptop would be so close to perfect for my parents. Google Chrome already is the one program they use all the time on their laptop. But Google Docs just isn’t good enough.)

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

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