Nobody’s looking down on anyone. I help my Mom because she asks. Should I not?
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My 86-year-old stepfather uses an iPhone. He had resisted using a smartphone until 2016, when my mother had a serious health crisis and he needed the phone to keep up with medical appointments and information. But he has taken to it. My 81-year-old father-in-law, whose vision is impaired, finds the accessibility features on his iPhone to be useful (especially large type; the phablet phone is a boon for him).
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First step in simplification: don’t use Faceid! If I had a dollar for everytime Faceid fails on my iphone12, forcing me to enter the passcode, I would have enough to buy the latest Pro/Max iphone.
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Well, I think that the industry or maybe developers sometimes don’t know their users. Up from a certain age group people are seen as an edge case, not important enough to fully understand their needs or wishes.
I sometimes provide training for the not so young anymore. A recurring theme is this:
I might show and explain how you attach a pic to an iMessage or how to send it via WhatsApp.
The question I hear quite often: Yes, but why would I want to do that, email works just fine.
Or: Why would I send a text when I can simply call the person?
Or: Why send any message on any channel, when I’m going to see Joe tomorrow anyway?
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All perfectly reasonable questions! I wish more people asked such things!
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The answer is “You might want to do that because it’s how the recipient expects to communicate, and they may not see your message in a timely fashion or at all. And Joe may be worried about you if he hasn’t heard from you before tomorrow.”
With communication, it always takes two to tango, and often one party or the other has to make some sort of a compromise to make the communication fluid. If there’s no desire to do that, that’s fine, but both parties should understand what’s happening and why.
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silbey’s list is fairly succinct. Optionally, you might add Firefox Focus as the default browser, which simplifies the UI and concentrates on security:
Even with all these ideas and tactics, there remains a problem with the numerous gestures/functions hidden in iOS that can be gotchas for the non-savvy user.
One example is camera activation by swiping-left on the lock screen. This can be handy, but it also causes problems. For one thing, anyone that does not know/understand this feature may inadvertently lose notifications or messages if they swipe and hit “clear” in an attempt to undo what they don’t understand. Undo is a function badly lacking in iOS and you can frequently see the impact on those who do not spend their days discovering all these little hidden features.
Apple could help this by allowing deeper granular feature toggles. Disabling swipes and gestures (either in part or altogether for those who cannot use or understand them effectively) would go a long way to helping the problem.
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Even when it’s working perfectly, FaceID will periodically require you to enter your passcode. These situations are described in the technical Platform Security Guide, if you’d like details, but the bottom line is that FaceID is not access control, it’s a secondary convenience shortcut, and your passcode is still going to be requested, by design.
My wife (76) and I(69) use the iPhone SE 3. I hope that the next generation retains the Home button but I wouldn’t mind a slightly larger display. . . The small size (like the iPhone 8) makes it more portable.
We basically configure our phones like you have done for your Mom. Our default is to only enable notifications for apps when it is actually a useful feature. We also have Do Not Disturb scheduled (we prefer different time periods) so that we don’t have mornings and evenings disturbed.
While we have our email accounts available on our iPhones we hardly ever use the Mail app. Dealing with email on our Macs is easier and minimizes phone interruptions.
We may be Luddites but except for the Wallet and ApplePay we do not use any financial apps on our phones. Our wallets only contain a couple of credit cards. We rarely use cash and long ago limited our debit cards to only ATM withdrawals. Credit card transactions have much better consumer protections than debit cards. And the cash-back option is a nice chunk of money seeing as how almost everything goes through a credit card.
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If you’re simplifying things for a senior, be sure to consider how well they can read the screen and the fonts used in the app. It’s really important to be able to read the information on financial apps clearly, so I do all my financial stuff on a 27-inch desktop screen.
We are “seniors” and that is certainly an important point. We have our displays optimized via the Accessibility settings but there is only so far one can go with the relatively small SE 3 screen. . .
I also prefer using a good quality mechanical keyboard vs. typing on the iPhone. I only use the phone for texting, etc. when I need to do so.
The primary reason why we don’t use most financial apps on our iPhones are the extra security risks, which is compounded by the fact that we almost never need to access our financial accounts while we are away from our Macs. When traveling it is a different matter and even then I prefer to use our MacBook Air rather than the iPhone.
As a 79-year-old Apple User Group leader in a retirement community, it was interesting to see ageism and ableism comments about “seniors” and the use of smartphones. I agree with the other olders who said, “I can do it myself.” Older adults are more diverse as we age, and I have found iPhone users with the latest equipment and savvy to use all the features. I also agree that Apple has gone overboard and the “be productive” features don’t add much to my use of my iPhone 14 Pro. It great you are helping your parents simplify the use of their phones. I too find many of my peers don’t care about the features, they just want to do certain things, and that is all they want to learn. What’s wrong with that? Remember many of us started use of media with the radio.
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Making your statement so general means everyone who commented is now concerned that they’re the one being scolded…which means we just lost what I thought to be a useful discussion spread out over multiple threads and an article.
As for me, I think I’ll continue, as she’s asked, to help my mother navigate her technical life at the moment. If people ask me about how I’m doing it because their parents have asked for similar help, I’ll continue to respond, despite the risk of being scolded.
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I’ve gone back and re-read this entire thread, and I think everyone has done a fine job of keeping their comments specific to their own experiences or those of the people they’re trying to help. There have been no general comments that I see as ageist or ableist. Which isn’t surprising, given that the TidBITS readership trends toward those who are 50 and older.
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The FaceID feature is one that keeps me using my iPad Mini 5 and my iPhone 7. I live in a large city and use mass transit heavily. I still wear a mask in these and other public settings, so presumably I would have to set up two “faces” to use FaceID (with/without mask), assuming that’s possible? I don’t want to be stuck with entering my passcode in public settings: that’s a security risk that has already been exploited by thieves. It’s so easy and unobtrusive to just use my fingerprint with the home button. it’s very rare that I have to enter my passcode.
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Apple’s had a “use FaceID with Mask” option for years now. Works fine.
It’s an optional setting you have to turn on as it’s slightly less secure (since it can’t see your mouth).
But still way better than TouchID (faster and more reliable and utterly transparent).
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Sure, feels like years, but:
From iPhone 12 or higher, requires iOS 15.4 (March 2022) or higher
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I fail to see how it’s at all better than Touch ID, let alone way better.
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Touch ID is problematic for people whose fingerprints cannot be read reliably, such as my wife. I don’t know how common that is, but it is far from unique, as she learned when she had to be fingerprinted for her school job.
To each their own, but in my opinion (and I loved Touch ID at the time), Face ID blows it out of the water:
- Works far more reliably (no having to use a particular finger or get it at just the right angle).
- Works even when your hands are full or fingers are wet or dirty.
- Far more secure.
- Works transparently (just looking at your device unlocks it, so most of the time when I’m looking at my phone to do something, it’s already unlocked it).
- Great for reading private messages on lock screen as it will transparently unlock just for you, but others can’t see your texts.
- Wickedly fast. I touch my banking app icon and it launches, unlocks, and shows me my accounts in just a few seconds. With Touch ID there was always a pause after launch when I had to wait for the Touch ID prompt to display, press my finger against the sensor, and wait for it to unlock. It wasn’t bad, but I can login twice with Face ID in the time it took for one Touch ID login. May not seem like much, but nothing can ever be too fast or convenient.
I have nothing against Touch ID – if it works for you, go for it. But don’t diss Face ID if you haven’t tried it. I’ve switched a number of relatives/friends to Face ID phones and I literally never hear of them having any issues with it, while most complained intermittent problems about Touch ID (and two elderly people could never get Touch ID to work at all for them and always used passcodes, which were naturally short and insecure since they type them all the time).
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