Marc Ram

My seventy something year old Mom had her Windows based desktop die on her just before Christmas. She has  taken the plunge and is now using a Mac mini with wireless keyboard and trackpad, along with a brand spanking new 27 inch LCD monitor.

Although the whole “switch to Mac” thing is not an unusual event these days, it is going to be interesting for me to see how it will affect her, but I don’t expect that there will be much of an issue. I must admit that she is not the usual ‘Mature’ user since she seemed to have no problem accepting that things are slightly different on the new computer, and moving from a 13 inch CRT to a 27 inch LCD should make the change a little more attractive, however she will need to remember to turn on the keyboard and trackpad when she starts up her Mac, something that is not intuitive when you have always used wired devices before.

Hopefully my encouragement to make the move will not serve to cause frustration in her daily computing experience, but I have realized that my mother, like my son, sees the computer as just another appliance to be used in daily life.

In a somewhat ironic twist, while I write this, I am also reformatting my favorite Mother in Laws’ windows laptop since it has also died. I suspect that there will be many IT support people that will consider switching their parents to Macs just to eliminate the level of  technical support that seems to be required for non technical users.

Two of my nephews are going to get iPads for Christmas this year. It struck me as interesting, that while iPads are still coveted items by many grown-up, others have no qualms about giving these tablet computing devices to kids that are only eight years old.

Its not that I think the parents are being overindulgent, its me wondering, how much time is the kid going to get to play with the device, vs how often the Adults will be vying for time with the almost seductive wireless internet-in-your-hand portal.

I also wonder if the parents realize that they are baptizing these young people into the cult of Apple, and how non-plussed they will be when they have to use a Windows based desktop computer. (Fair disclosure, I started in the software world writing business applications first for MS-DOS then MS-Windows based platforms, and now exclusively use a MacBook Pro for all my computing needs, and yes it does triple boot. Oh and I like Angry Birds too.)