My Mom’s decided she wants a Mac.
Mom’s in her 60s. She’s been using Windows machines forever. She just got a laptop last year, a very slick Dell that seemed to be working just fine at Christmas, when I showed her how to use iTunes and the Apple Store so she could take advantage of the gift card I’d gotten her (and yes, her Shuffle works just fine with Windows). She also has a fairly new PC desktop. She and Dad are retirees on somewhat fixed income.
This past December, I gave my sis Deb the old iMac G5 (the one Scooter knocked off the desk shortly after we moved here). It was still working just fine with only slight burps in the DVD read-back, she couldn’t afford to replace her old dead computer, and wanted to go back to using a Mac (and yeah, we did tell her about the kitty crash). She’s been happy with it, it runs what she needs it to run — just being able to play Sims 2 has made her very happy. Just being able to plug in her digital camera and get it to automatically load her pics has made her very very happy.
I usually cheer Macs on; I’m a proud Mac ‘-ite.
But now Mom wants a Mac, and I’m not ready for THAT fall-out. I remember the sheer hell I went through when she got that iPod Shuffle, and THAT is fairly simple to use. THIS is going to be a full operating system changeover, and yeah, I know Apple tries to make it as simple and painless as possible, but this is MOM we’re talking about.
But whatever Mom wants, Mom finds some justification to get, no matter what, so she and Dad and Deb are coming up this Sunday to check out the Apple Store here in Columbus. I’ve also insisted that she at least play around on either Deb’s computer or mine before she does this, to see what the op system is like and make SURE it’s what she wants to do.
It’s all going to go in one ear and out the other, I’m sure.
Macs are so streamlined, compared to Windows; I’ve seen all the tons of icons on her and Dad’s desktops, for all these programs that came with the system that they don’t use, that they don’t remove because “it might be important”. Usually what you can do on a Windows machine, you can do on a Mac (easier, faster, with lots less hassle), but I still dread the software crossover, because Mom has apparently downloaded a lot of “useful” apps off the Internet (and wonders why her computer is so slow)…most of which are Windows-only.
I guess I’ll deal with it as it comes. Luckily Deb’s another Mac user, so Mom has someone ELSE to bug with questions.
Across The Shadows 