[codelust]

While Marco has written specifically about iCloud and the iPad, what he describes is not limited to just everything Apple. My father recently turned 70 and he has a PC at home which is used for listening to music, browsing and a lot of CAD. He started using computers much before I did, but he did not grow up with them and still finds it hard to deal with GUIs. It has always baffled me as to how someone who was excellent at using the CLI can struggle so much with what is meant to be easier. I am talking about ease, not efficiency.

And it is not that he's not a sharp cookie anymore. He runs the household, still consults on his civil engineering projects, tinkers frequently with various things electronic/electrical, but GUIs stump him and his predicament has only gotten worse with the newer iterations of operating systems. For my generation, who grew up with the modern computing paradigms, this is unfathomable, but it is a real problem too, one with no real solution.

I have found my eventual solution in doing Teamviewer sessions for most problems. It is heartbreaking to make aged parents feel incompetent because they can't seem to grasp easily the same concepts we can grasp without even half a thought.