I spent a great deal of today shopping for a new computer for my parents. They have been using my old Power Macintosh 6100 for years and it's finally gotten too painful, even for them. Put it this way, it barely can run AOL 4.
My father has always been a photography buff and my mother has always loved photo albums so I can already tell that iPhoto is going to be a real hit. I was surprised, though, at some of my father's questions. He wanted to be able to pull stills from a movie, to burn his own DVD, was interested in listening to an Apple Store lecture on GarageBand. I've known him all my life and my mom's known him longer but I think we were both surprised at the extent and variety of his interests.
I think that a lot of older people are like that, with all sorts of ideas percolating in their heads but no accessible way to get them out. They have no patience for the technical minutiae of getting a computer to work, they just want to do what they want to do with a minimum of fuss and dependence on outside help. I've always known that the demographic existed. I just never figured out how much my father was a member...
Posted by TMLutas at January 24, 2004 05:57 PM