Today, I thought I’d share a light-hearted personal story.
So, I have a grandmother who is 79 years old. She lived very close to our family growing up, so naturally, our family has a very close relationship with her. Ever since I came to Canada she misses me tremendously and always lets me know of it as well. Although she is almost 80, she is still very mentally agile, and when the iPad 2 was about to come out, I demanded my dad to buy her one. All I expected her to be able to do with her iPad 2 was for her to make Facetime calls to see my face every now and then. Ever since then, she has been using it to listen to radios through Internet, read the news, browse the web, play Tetris & Angry Bird, send me messages with picture attached, oh and of course, lets not forget Facetime. Her latest pastime is searching for YouTube videos and Podcasts – Can you believe she brought up Psy’s Gangnam Style before I even thought of mentioning him because she watched his video on her own?
Yes, I love technology and I am a rational consumer who is aware that Apple is not the only one innovating these days. But there is something to be said about creating a software that achieves such intuitive integration with its hardware that an 79 year-old lady, who can’t operate a computer to save her life, can learn to communicate through it and consume digital contents on it. On paper, Apple may not wow anyone, but in experience, it still wows me whenever I get a Skype call from my grandma.
By the way, her new iPad mini just arrived last week. There is something very strange about our family picture if my sister is getting my grandma’s iPad 2 as a hand-me-down, as she gets the spanking new iPad mini. Strange indeed.