Jim,
Great call. I have been trying to figure out the right thing to buy my
very intelligent, computer-free aunt who is 88 years old and lives in
the outbacks of Minnesota.
(As a side note - she and her husband sold and repaired business
equipment and typewriters - right about the time when the first Xerox
copier came out).
She recently asked me about netbooks which she read about in the AARP
magazine.
I have also considered buying her a Kindle. But the iPad is a better match.
Very smart insight.
- Donna
Quoting Jim Leftwich <jl...@orbitnet.com>:
I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction, based on a
few surprising data points I've already gathered and an intuition:
The iPad is going to make a big splash with older people.
Grandmothers and grandfathers, retired people, older folks that a
desktop or laptop has up until now just seemed to be overkill.
Elders who may have been amazed by the the iPhones younger folks have
shown them, but felt that they either didn't need a phone, it was too
small and fiddly, or both.
My 88-year-old neighbor who only has a very old mid-1990s computer
(that can't effectively connect to modern online experience)
excitedly showed me all the news item clippings on the iPad she's
collected and suggested that this may just be what she was looking
for. Another friend said that his 77-year-old mother surprised him
by announcing that she's decided she's going to get one.
The simplified nature of iPhone/iPod Touch-scale apps, coupled with
the easy to carry around or prop up form factor may indeed be an
excellent fit for the lifestyle of older adults.
Widgets that are as simple as weather, finance, photos, email,
messaging, etc. on the iPhone/iPod Touch are very handy, simple, and
useful and the kind of service and information that there's no easy,
large-format access to by older people without computers or small
mobile devices.
The Nintendo Wii surprised a lot of people when it became a hit with
older people, and the iPad may be the next device to do the same.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48704
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