@futurebird oof, and in fact I just noticed that the link to the project page from the hackaday article is 404. Possibly not a good sign. Hope you get yours.
As the baby boom generation ages, I think it says nothing good about us that we’ve focused all of our efforts as a society on ever-changing multifunctional devices that impose a massive time tax just to keep up with. “Do one thing, do it well” and do it consistently is a hugely underrated approach.
They have been sending email updates over the years it's taken. I just sent an email to Justine to check on the project. At the time I was nearly broke but so excited by the idea I still scraped the cash together to support it.
Since then I've become an iPhone user and gotten a better job LOL.
But I still really want to try it out. Maybe I'll ditch my phone after all.
@futurebird My dad recently asked me how to cut the beginning from a song & use the rest as a ringtone. Turned out the "song" was a link to a YouTube video.
My brain just went blank ... maybe if he installs YouTube on the phone, it'll let him remix the video & download ... no, probably not ... maybe he can get youtube-dl & ... never mind, no way I can explain all that to him.
Sometimes I think it's also just getting harder and harder to actually help. Everything's so closed off & limited.
Selling ringtones is big business. They have made it hard on purpose. gotta get that $1.99 from everyone.
Rent seeking like ticks coursing for warm human bodies and CO2.
Then there are the TV shows, audiobooks, videogames no one can buy for any price because of regions and even more greed driven BS.
Can't make the phone easy to use for seniors but they do have time to hobble functionality so that you end up paying for this or that. The market isn't working for software IMO.
Sometimes it feels like the ideas that excite the industry most are those that find a way to make people pay for something that used to be free.
You don't get anything new. Just more steps and the same result.
If we lived in a world where ring tones couldn't be sold. Because they are too damn short and it's fair use in the extreme if you bought the song. What would be different? What would we loose of value. It's a very very slightly objectively better world.
@futurebird@stveje my assistant bought one of those senior senior phones for his father. Disaster. On the surface the phone seemed easy to use but was just a coating of veneer. Once you tried to do anything you ended up in stock Android and too hard to use.
My girlfriend’s mother just got a flip Jitterbug and it is a joy to use. Just makes phone calls but her mom was excited by the fact that she could make phone calls without problems again.
@futurebird@stveje They didn't ship the original iPad with a Calculator app, so now the iPad is the only Apple device where you have a choice between free data hungry privacy nightmare Calculator apps, Calculator apps with in-app purchases so you can have an ad-free tier, and paid Calculator apps with pseudoscientific options that lack basic functions like nth root and sine.
We need a way for people to make a living selling things that work so people buy them once.
@futurebird I was so sad to see my own parents go this way. My father built his own computer once and used all sorts of early systems. Now he can only use Apple products.
They're both getting a bit tinfoil hat lately with stuff similar to that. It's maddening that they used to be smarter than this. There ARE things to watch out for. Heck, Apple is collecting tons of info on them and my mother uses Facebook and won't stop. They don't care about those things. Just the imagined things.
I'm serious if you are a therapist offer something like "couples therapy" but for kid and their parents who are having tech communication issues.
Whenever I talk to my mom I hear something alarming.
"What is One Drive? I think I signed up for it and I keep getting requests to share files from people I don't know."
"Did you email a file to someone?"
"No."
@slothrop@futurebird@kritischelezer My dad’s been running Debian stable with the standard GNOME desktop for over a decade now. It’s great. Very very gradual change in look and feel and no adware or other monetization crap. Requires minimal remote tech support and if necessary it can usually be done invisibly via ssh
@futurebird@kritischelezer This is going to fast become very common, I think. "Parental controls" carries a lot of implicit baggage, maybe a better term would be something like "caregiver options" or so?
Semantics aside, I think one of the frustrating things about old age is the gradual loss of dignity. Now many basic functions of life are mediated by tech, those too carry some dignity. And those too can be lost. We haven't really grappled, as a society, with the consequences.
@futurebird
Reminds me of a comic in a newspaper I saw ages ago. Parent holding a box (back when software came in boxes) coming to teenager sitting at computer "this will let me control what pages you can visit and when you can use computer". Teenager just stares at the parent through one panel, after which parent facepalms "if you show me how to install it" @kritischelezer
Take a photo with her phone, not do a screenshot. I'm deep enough in that I know better than to ask for screenshots.
She has learned how to take photos, but still only emails them to me rather than texting them .... I hope she can catch it. I really want to know what the heck is going on.
@futurebird My mother is very not-tech-savvy. She almost doesn't use internet, only when she look for some info for her work (basic search). (In some way I am jealous, she almost doesn't have digital footprint.)
I bought her laptop for Christmas/birthday/these two joined, without system and installed Linux Mint on it. Other than downloading updates when she visits me, there is no maintenance required, nothing happens "itself" there.
But she has an Android phone... some lesser known brand, similar to Xiaomi... Relme? Don't remember now... And I discovered there are SO MANY things on modern Android phones that not-tech people could accidentally click on and then panic about things they "break". And stuck updates, things shutting down "itself", apps losing permissions and stopping work because of this...
@futurebird I know this isn´t any help, but my wife and I are in the same predicament with her parents.
We gave them iPhones in the hope that this would make it easier to help them with tech stuff, just walking them through it all. Turns out that both of them really missed out on careers in software QA. I hadn´t realize there were so many ways to do things wrong on an iPhone. 🙄
My father, on the other hand, just flat-out refuses to get a smartphone. It's probably for the better.
@slothrop@futurebird I gave my dad a smart phone for Xmas back in 2018 or 2019 I think. It was an older model already then, and he still had one of the old Nokias with dwindling battery capacity. He uses it now though. But it took years before he even took it out of the box.
He bought an Android tablet that he learned to use, so later on using a phone with the same system was less of a problem I guess. Just smaller buttons.
@futurebird In fairness, both Google and Apple are doing an absolutely terrible job of keeping user interfaces and workflows constant.
Slight changes to established workflows drive even me to distraction, and I consider myself a tech person.
But our parents, who never signed up for this bullshit, end up unable to perform everyday tasks after an update, just because a 20-something UX designer in California felt like "innovating".
@futurebird I can deeply empathize with people who started working on Unix systems in the 80s, or Linux in the 90s, and just insist on staying on the command line.
There are some changes there, too, but it's all a bit less... chaotic.
(/me withdraws behind Chesterton's fence, emerging only to occasionally hurl invective and rotten tomatoes at impertinent younglings whose target design persona is a squirrel on speed)
@slothrop@futurebird I wouldn't pick on the 20-something designer, but rather on the senior PM who thought that changing an established UI was somehow a good idea
@slothrop@futurebird Yes to this, but more generally. I ended up in a "tech psychologist" role when we were visiting my in-laws. What everyone else was worried about turned out to be a phishing attempt they could ignore. The thing that everyone else dismissed as phishing was actual evidence of credit card fraud for thousands of dollars and took a day of calls and visiting the police office to get it cleaned up. We expect so much of people just to get through their day.
@futurebird Both my parents did seminal work in their fields, and heavily used computers. Smartphones just don't compute for dad. Mom understood them a bit better, and could translate for dad. I'm at a loss in translating. Even I use mine minimally. Cut-n-past on the phone, nope.
@futurebird Ugh, the side-buttons thing! It's been a problem for me on my two most recent phones. They're positioned exactly right for me to press them when I'm picking it up from a desk. It's really hard to NOT press them.
@futurebird My mom was very good in keeping up to date and learning tech, my father went choleric when he didn't is.
One day I realised that I felt responsible for the tech experience they had but it was not like that the other way around! I am still making the same mistake with friends today.
(Now I'd enroll my parents devices into a MDM solution like jamf and deactivate everything that may confuse them. Like Siri.
And I'd install an adblocker like 1Blocker to make the web less confusing.)
I think turning off Siri was a mistake for my folks. I think it depends on what they expect. My nephew who's visually impaired uses Siri a LOT and my parents have seen her using it and want to know why they can't do that.
(and having Siri set to only come on when you press the buttons is what made them think it was "hackers listening in")
@futurebird Oh I recognize the accidentally keeping buttons pressed... my dad has such clumsy fingers often. I'm constantly pondering to give him a VERY THICK case so he can't accidentally press stuff anymore.
I'm getting him one of those loops ... mom wanted to get one but I had to explain that it would block the wireless charging... which he really likes and now at least he keeps the phone charged even though it's in the other room due to the "hackers listening in"
I turned Siri off but I think I should have left it on now. That was my mistake since I was thinking about how I use the phone. I don't like Siri popping up all the time, but I think it might help...
My Dad really liked setting the background photos & ring tone on his phone. He loved customizing it.
There's a notion that having fewer options makes UI easier and to some degree it's true. But I think people can become alienated from tech when it makes them feel stupid and out of control.
I'd think about framing such a class around "making the phone your own"
Like how MySpace... for some reason non-tech people loved it.
If I recall correctly "everyone" (who exactly is everyone?) moved from mySpace (with the cool kids going for livejournal or diaryLand) to facebook/twitter.
"everyone" has more to do with which software and social media gets mentioned in newspapers, TV shows etc. than any organic choice by the masses based on features or quality.
Right now the same media that claim to hate Elon are keeping twitter/X alive by continuing to mention it & use it!
Dad was so aggravating. He'd call me up and say his current computer was acting up - I'd drive the 40 miles to the ol' Family Abode and straighten it out and advise him to get something with more memory.
"Dad get a new computer." He'd huff in his Special Way and refuse. A week would go by, he'd call up and say he bought a new puter and would I get it working for him.
I think part of what can make it worse is if your folks are capable enough that they want to do a bunch of stuff, they aren't just not interested in doing anything with tech... but they don't want to take advice and they don't have the energy to get invested and learn how it works.
And since you're the kid they don't really take all the stuff we're saying seriously... but they are also terrified of hackers.
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