At her request I have procured an iPad for my aunt, whose computering requirements fall to me.
I've just set it up, more or less. There are no instructions, beyond a diagram with labels for the four buttons. One is labelled 'Home' and turns out to be fairly important, but no explanation of its function is given.
Eventually with a bit of googling I fathom how to see what applications are actually open, and to close them. There must be an easier way to close one as you finish with it but I don't know what it is.
It seems to be needlessly mysterious for something that is based on being intuitive. I set up her Gmail, or rather it set itself up - Lord knows what it's doing, which seems to be the Apple way - I have no idea whether it is effectively webmail, IMAP or what. There are some icons for dealing with emails when you've read them but no labels. The dustbin is self-explanatory, I don't know what the others do and I don't know how to find out. I did try Apple's support site but it was clearly designed and written by the same smug so and sos who designed the UI.
I'll figure it eventually but why is it so hard? I was playing with Windows 8 yesterday which has had poor write ups but I found it easier to guess at than the iPad.
I'll probably end up with one myself for the good parts - instant on, good for portability, battery life, browsing, email (when I understand it) and Skype - but they really do deserve a good kicking for the 2 hours I've wasted on their tiresome little puzzles so far.
Does it get better? I need to more or less master this before I hand it over to a highly intelligent but slightly technophobic relative.
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I wouldn't bother with the specific e-mail app. I log on via Safari and it just sits in the background in a tab working away.
I found it intuitive, but I've had an iPod Touch for a few years...
Last edited by: R.P. on Mon 23 Apr 12 at 23:48
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When Apple says intuitive, it is only for other Apple product users :-)
iTunes is the most difficult mass market software I have ever used. Thankfully I don't have to use it often (only to update iOS and initial setup).
Setting up email in iPad is quite simple though.
The biggest hurdle I faced in iPad is lack of file system! After jailbreaking it I can now access file system but it has not been designed for human use.
Even though iOS is nothing but a Debian Linux underneath, Apple managed to wrap it around mystic layer.
Last edited by: movilogo on Tue 24 Apr 12 at 11:17
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The iPhone is intuitive, but you have to look at it from a non technical perspective, you are looking for stuff from a semi geeks perspective, but put your dumb schlocks glasses on and it suddenly becomes clear.
For example Gmail, why do you need to know how it is connected? Your aunt has no need to know, nor would she care how it connected. It did. Thats enough.
The home button? its the only button on the front, the first thing any user is going to do is press it. Its a model of user clarity.
Filesystem? why do you need to jailbreak into the filesystem? all you will do is eventually screw it up. Its not a PC, its a standalone device.
I am not an Apple fan BTW despise the "do everything our way" approach, I hate Microsoft for its sloppy wasteful coding, I dislike linux for the constant harping that you don't need to be a geek to use it, when clearly you do.
Funnily I have two apple products, 1 microsoft product, and one linux product.
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>> I dislike linux for the constant harping that
>> you don't need to be a geek to use it, when clearly you do.
The latest distros are actually pretty good. I had PC Linux OS running on my old Dell Optiplex in about 10 minutes, with only a handful of mouse clicks. Wireless networking was up and running, I had 1600x1200 graphics with 32 bit colour, audio, etc etc. It even auto detected my little USB connected HP DeskJet printer and installed a perfectly useable driver. I was surprised to find Open Office was also installed and ready to go.
The fun bit of course is the second it doesn't do something 'by itself'. Linux is either a doddle, or a project. There is nothing in between. But to go from a blank box to a fully functional basic PC for browsing the interweb, word processing and so forth, it was quicker and much less effort than Windows.
Of course, repeating the exercise on a different bit of hardware could be a whole different story. And in that Open Source way, it could download one duff update which completely screws up either a single function, or the whole installation. That's happened to me before.
I still think Windows is the best compromise. Easy to install and use without knowing what you are doing, but gives you a level of freedom to tweak and improve if you do. I can't personally stand Apple.
Last edited by: DP on Wed 25 Apr 12 at 21:12
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Not an Apple person yet... - R.P.
