Apple's Family: The many surprises of creating an Apple ID with age 13 or under

(You can skip the rant to get to the tech details)

<rant>I frequently berate Apple for the radioactive-feces-infested-dumpster-fire that they’ve built out of Family Sharing and Parental Controls / Screen Time / Restrictions [1] … but my latest experience has added a note of sympathy for the engineers who offend Tim Cook and are HR assigned to work on this prior to leaving Apple.

Apple has built something insanely complicated. The intersection of user interfaces, regional rules and restrictions, content licensing, DRM, functional requirements, iOS, macOS, iCloud, sync, multiple OS versions … heck, there probably time zones in there too. At this point they might as well give up and throw a neural network at it.

Whatever your day job, be grateful this isn’t what you work on.

Things are almost as bad on the consumer side. There’s a reason I seem to be the only person alive trying to make remote Screen Time work. (It’s a book project, I don’t have a choice.) With some effort I’ve come up with practical recommendations for caregivers (example) — but they assume the software actually functions. In practice I have run into a wide range of bugs and weirdness, particularly since iOS 13 was released.<rant>

Among the many complications Apple contends with into are rules about how many devices and how many users can be a part of a Family for the purposes of both DRM management and remote Screen Time. These are poorly documented, but as best I can tell the limit is 5 family members and somewhere around 10 devices (it’s not clear how multi-user accounts on macOS are treated or Apple TV). Our family has five members so we’re pretty much at the limit and I think we’re at the absolute device limit as well.

I say “think” because it’s not clear that there are error messages, I think things simply break.

So the baseline situation is pretty bad, even before one runs into bugs with handing down devices between family members.

I made things worse though. For a book project I added a test account — sphone4all@icloud.com. That pushed us up to six family members and probably hit or exceeded our device limit. Since my test phone is an iPhone 6 [2] it can’t upgrade to iOS 13 and is no longer useful for the book project. So I decided to try to remove it.

That’s where my next set of problems began. I’d make the mistake of creating the book account with an “age” less than 13. Ages are important in Apple’s Screen Time world. Basically:

Age 18 or more: independence, controls stop working, can purchase ad lib, can be Organizer. (Basically at age 18 you need to remove children from Family.)

Age 13: non-vulnerable status but subject to controls, cannot be Organizer. Age 13-18 is the range for Screen Time and content sharing. If you are the caregiver for a vulnerable adult (ex: cognitive disability) and need Screen Time support you need to periodically adjust their birthdate so they are over 13 and under 18. (We need legislation so Apple supports cognitive disabilities they way they support visual disabilities.)

Age 12 or less: vulnerable status. See below for the special rules.

I’d blundered by creating an iCloud ID for a “child” account with a current age of < 13. These vulnerable user accounts are special:

• They cannot be deleted by users. Only Apple can remove them. They can only be shifted between Family Organizers (supports divorce, parental death remarriage, etc). If a child should die, the grieving parents will need to work with Apple support.
• The birthdates cannot be changed. (Of course.)
• Since they cannot be deleted the Organizer iCloud ID they are associated with cannot become a non-Family ID.
• Since the Organizer ID must stay a Family ID the payment method cannot be removed from it.

That last bullet point is important. It’s a bit weird, but Apple documents how to create an Apple ID that doesn’t have a payment method. You can use it to buy free apps and tunes.

You can’t, however, turn that Apple ID into a family organizer:

If you're the family organizer for a Family Sharing group and want to share purchases with your family, you're required to have at least one payment method on file. A payment method is also required to set up accounts for children.

If you have an Apple ID like that, and you try to make it a Family Organizer in macOS Mojave iCloud despite the warning, you’ll get this helpful error message:

“There was an unexpected error”. Yeah, Apple was serious about that “requires a credit card” warning, they just didn’t code the error handler response for those who ignored it. I figured given the kludgy workaround Apple documented that the warning was obsolete. Wrong.

Why does Family Sharing require a payment method? I suspect Apple’s hacked together back ends can’t prevent some purchases even when there’s no payment method — and Apple doesn't want to get stuck with the tab. Another possibility is that it’s needed as part of Organizer identity tracing in case a vulnerable child family member is at risk.

So, what do you do when you have too many kids and you need to dump one that’s under 13?

The only recourse, short of phoning Apple support, is create another full Apple ID (age over 18), make it a Family Organizer, and transfer the sub-13 to that “Organizer”. You need hardware to create a full Apple ID, but if you have a Mac you can do it just by adding a system user. I did that to upgrade a limited Apple ID I’d created long ago to a full Apple ID. I then tried to use this fake parent/Organizer without a payment method, which is how I got the “unexpected error”.

After I added a real payment method and confirmed iTunes could see the account change I tried to again make that Apple ID the Organizer for a new family. This took a while. At first the macOS Mojave iCloud Preference Pane would simply display a blank window. After about five minutes it worked. I presume a back end system got updated.

From there I hopped through the transfer process between the macOS account for my new Organizer Apple ID and my iPhone that currently managed my faux 11yo. Some of the screens i saw are illustrative:

I got an error message during the process saying the request had expired, but it went through anyway. I think I got that errant error message because I backed up a screen to do a screenshot. Yeah, this stuff is fragile.

So it appears for now that I’ve moved my fake 11yo from my true Family to a new fake Family where it will sit for another 2 years. Then it will turn 13 and I can vaporize it (I’ve created a future task :-) and then I can remove the payment method for the fake Organizer.

Once I get my strength up I may try to contact Support about some of the other problems with our Family Screen Time, like that handed down device still stuck to my daughters account (or I can just wait until she’s 18 and exits).

Now I need some Scotch, but it’s still a bit early here ...

- fn-

[1] Extending the existing Family Sharing to enable remote Screen Time management was a fatal error.

[2] The iPhone 6 can’t move beyond iOS 12, but Apple is still supporting iOS 12 on it, and since iOS 12 is superior to 13 in several ways the 6 is arguably now a better phone than the 6s.

See also:

• Two new discoveries in iOS Screen Time (parental controls): Age 13 and Apple ID incompatible with Screen Time
• Screen Time old device bug: Dev used device ID as key, forgot Apple ID
• iOS 12: "family sharing" is still for children only -- ask to buy disabled at age 18 in US

Father longterm care iPad videoconferencing project: Securing the iPad

My father has been doing well in a Quebec long term care facility for veterans (in Canada that has historically meant WW II, he’s in his 90s). Things are getting tougher though — the facility is shifting from federal to provincial control. Great staff are leaving and programs will be stressed.

I see him every 3-4 months, but in between I was surprised how well Skype worked with him. He does much better speaking when he can see me than he does on the phone. It seems to be related to knowing when to try speaking and when to listen. He also seems to hear Skype sound better than mobile phone sound. (It’s likely much higher quality.)

Even with the old regime though the Skype conferences often failed. Tech complexity and organizational issues forced us to discontinue them.

So now I’m going to try bringing him an LTE iPad Air 2. I’ll get a Rogers SIM card when I visit in a few weeks and we’ll see if it works from his room. If all goes well it will cost him an extra $10-$15/month — and the iPad cost [1].

Dad’s lost a few wallets from his room. I think most longterm care facilities see this kind of problem. Visitors can have issues. So we need to secure his iPad. Other than photo display I think he’ll only be using it for conferencing. So it needs to be secure [2], continuously powered up, stored somewhere he can sit, and not take up much room. The secure device needs to leave speakers and camera clear.

After some thought I ordered the $33 CTA Digital Universal Anti-Theft Security Grip with POS Stand for Tablets - iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4, Galaxy Tab, Note 10.1, 7-10-inch Tablets (PAD-UATGS) (grip and stand). It seems solid enough, it will keep the iPad off his desk, and there are screw holes (but no screws included). It may screw into his (antique) desk, but, even though it’s not shown in the picture, the lock comes with a cable. So I might be able to secure it to his desk in a less damaging and harder to remove way.

Of course the iPad Air 2 is way too thin for this device. It flops around. There’s supposed to be an included adapter strip, but mine was missing. I don’t think it would have worked — this home made setup seems a lot better. I had some TrueValue gripping pads (549104, TV23148) lying around…

I put those inside the corner retainers:

and it works pretty well:

So the first step is complete. Next step will be to test some of the conferencing options for data use and usability with various iPad accessibility features enabled: Skype vs. FaceTime vs. Facebook Messenger (Hangout is not very useable.)

I don’t expect Dad will use it by himself, we’re hoping a friend who helps with him will get things set up. I want it to be useable for them though.

- fn -

[1] (Rant) Incidentally, the iPad Air reminds me what a mixed bag Apple is these days. Nice device in many ways, but when I brought my mother an iPad six years ago one of the features she loved most was it could be used as a high quality digital photo frame. It was easy to launch from the lock screen. She loved that.

So, of course, Apple pulled it from the lock screen around iOS 7 and then ditched the replacement with iOS 9. There’s exactly one half-decent alternative, an app called Picmatic. Not to be confused with spammy copycat apps of the same name in the kinda broken App Store.

I don’t know if Apple is merely senile, or if the app had to be reworked for iOS 9 and it got ditched in a last minute panic to get that half-baked release out the door. Either way, the good news is that now that Ive has retired there’s only Cook to launch.

[2] Would it have killed Apple to incorporate some sort of secure lock feature in the iPad? Ok, yes, it would have.

Broken iPhone home button: App Switcher access via assistive touch

There are lots of pages that describe using Apple's Assistive Touch to work around the iPhone's defective-by-design home button [1]. Alas, none of the articles I read told me how to get to the App Switcher (multitasking screen). On my son's balky iPhone 4 I can get a single-click to work, but a double-click is hopeless. Changing the Home-click speed didn't work.

Fortunately it's pretty simple. On iOS 6.1.3, after you've enabled the assistive touch "hockey puck" and moved it to a good location on your screen, tap once to bring up the main screen with the Home button, favorites, etc. Now tap on Device then again on "More". Multitasking at bottom will bring up App Switcher (really, it should have been labeled App Switcher - bad Apple). Unfortunately you can't create a custom gesture for App Switcher on a non-jailbroken iPhone; the iPad four finger sideways swipe doesn't work.

You can also have the home button repaired, but iFixit rates repair as "difficult". That translates as "elvish complexity" - normal humans won't be able to do this on their first attempt.  Apple may replace an iPhone 4 for about $150, but Apple has been increasing replacement charges. FirstTech, a reputable independent repair shop in Minneapolis, charges $159 for a swap, but has no separate charge for home button repair. Note a device swap should include a very useful battery refresh - but do confirm that.

CNet's four ways to fix an unresponsive iPhone home button lists a connector bend and alcohol fix approach. Gentle connector bend had a minimal effect on my son's i4. I may try the alcohol fix. It's not worth paying $150 for a device swap as he's due to inherit a 4S when Emily goes to a 5S. His 4 will become a standby device.

[1] Apparently a flex cable problem, aggravated by bending of the power connector beneath the flex cable. Changes in the design of the iPhone 5 should make this much less likely.

See also:

• Four ways to fix an unresponsive iPhone home button | How To - CNET: Buried by link farm posts, this is the best summary of approaches: calibrate/restore (unlikely), realign (possible), clean (worth it) and assistive tech home screen.

Configuring OS X and iOS for elders: Simplifying email, remove the Reminder items from Snow Leopard Mail

My mother first started using a Mac about six years ago, and an iPad 3 years ago. I wrote posts on how I configured both (I need to update some links to documents lost when Apple set fire to iWeb) [5]:

• OS X and Mac Mini tutorial and configuration guide 2007
• Elder Pad update: My mother's iPad continued 2011 and 2010

Her limited vision and ambulation mean she doesn't get that much use out of her devices these days, but she is quite proud of them. She particularly enjoys having her iPad on a prominent chair side stand. [4]

The one thing she most likes is to read email. She can't reply any more, but she likes to see it. The use of an ancient desktop [4] CRT running in 800x600 combined with the largest available font sizes means she can slowly digest whatever I send her.

The catch is there are too many sidebar items in Mail on iOS and on OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). It's too easy for her click on the wrong "box" and get lost in Drafts or Sent mail. There's an easy for fix for that, but I missed it for some time.

Since she gets her email via IMAP from her Google account [1] all I had to do was use the Labels Setting in Gmail configure to disable IMAP access for everything except the Inbox. That greatly simplified her iOS and OS X (Snow Leopard) Mail sidebars. (See below for a caveat on OS X Mail restarts.)

I was still left with a "Reminders" item in Snow Leopard Mail.app. I searched around for tips on how to remove that -- and found lots of frustration and some red herrings but no answers. Alas, this was an Apple usability Fail. Go to iCal (!) and in the sidebar look for "EMAIL INBOX", uncheck "Mail To Do". Restart Mail and it's gone. [Uh Oh: See Update!)

One Snow Leopard caveat to note: Between the Mail.app IMAP changes and the MobileMe removal I found I needed to restart Mail 1-2 times and OS X once to get all the changes established.

In iBook the Athelas font scales to much larger font sizes than some of the others.

As long as I'm on this topic, I'll pass on a few semi-related tips from some long delayed Snow Leopard/MobileMe maintenance [3]

• Sign out of MobileMe then restart. I think that's needed to clean out residual MobileMe settings [2].
• Set iOS Contacts back to old-fashioned (cable or wifi) iTunes sync - need to keep her SL desktop and iPad in sync.
• Enable the old Google Contacts to OS X Address Book sync. This is triggered whenever the iPad syncs by cable or Wifi and, with her tiny Address Book, it seems to work and manage conflicts pretty well. I'd be wary of trying this with a real world Address/Contact collection.

- fn -

[1] (She doesn't interact with Gmail directly, though I do that remotely as needed.)

[2] Apple's decision to exile Snow Leopard users when they discontinued MobileMe was a nice gift to Google.

[3] I make the trip to the old country q3months, and computer maintenance isn't at the top of the list. This trip I got more done than usual.

[4] If I were setting her up today she wouldn't have a desktop of course. I must note though that in some way she prefers the desktop. The iPad is heavy and awkward for her; she needs something half the weight but the iPad 7 display is too wee.

[5] A lot of the things I've done to simplify her Mac/iOS use also work well for very young children and special needs users

Update 5/13/13: Ok, that Damned Reminders To Do thing is some kind of bug.  It returned mysteriously. I wonder if it's somehow related to the end of MobileMe. There are about seven "ghost" tasks that show up without any attributes, and somehow display in Maill regardless of the iCal Mail setting. Resetting old SL iSync and disabling it didn't help. After a bunch of manipulations I got some message about 'server versions' not matching local versions. I might have gotten somewhere by deleting everything in Library/Calendars -- which is only feasible because she doesn't use Calendars.  Alas, I had to leave before confirming this bug is truly squashed.

Review: Snapfon ezONE-C Senior mobile phone (GSM, unlocked)

I bought my 83 yo mother the unlocked GSM Snapfon ezONE-C Senior Cell Phone with Big Buttons for about $80 (it's $60 now) along with its car charger (forgetting she doesn't drive any more!). I then carried it to her home in Montreal and activated on a Roger's 40 cent/min (but 0$/day) PayGo plan.

My mother likes her Mac Mini and iPad, but she's largely blind, quite arthritic, and has peripheral neuropathy reducing her sense of touch. So most phones won't work for her. This was the only phone we could find that she might be able to use. She needs, for example, to be able to call for help when Montreal's sometimes unreliable wheelchair transport service fails to show up - leaving her stuck in her wheelchair as snow swirls, water freezes, and hungry wolves approach over the ice.

It is impressive how few devices are made for people like my mother.  I assume the demand isn't there. Certainly if she were younger she might do well with a VoiceOver iPhone, but the combination of age and diminished touch make VoiceOver hard for her. In any case that was my best guess, but the next best choice to this $60 phone is probably a $700 iPhone 5.

Based on limited use, here are my impressions of the device. I'll also add a modified version of this review to Amazon.com. I'll start with the bad, then the good. Bottom line: I think it will work, but I'd rather buy a better version for $100 than the current phone for $60.

The Bad

• It doesn't get its time settings off the mobile network. Very weird.
• I fear it doesn't  persistently store its configuration. I don't want to test this, but I think prolonged removal of the battery will wipe all setup - and setup is a bit painful. File this under "suspicion" not proven. Settings do survive a quick battery swap. (Maybe it's storing some data on the SIM card, in which case I might have been confused by a SIM swap.)
• This is a very Chinese product -- feels like it was built for the Chinese or Japanese market. That is, it has a number of weird add-on features like an FM radio and a flashlight that mostly add complexity and seem weird for the US market. On the other hand, I think my mother might actually use the FM radio. It uses the ear set as an antenna. In my testing it worked well with an iPhone ear set and with iPod ear buds despite the manual saying only Nokia and SNAPFON earphones work.)
• It has too many features that can simply cause confusion and will never be used, like 'conference call' and 'call waiting'. Even SMS is of dubious value. The radio introduces many options.
• The power connector is small and hard for my mother to find. I stuck a rubber matt near it so she could find it. It is easily confused with the headphone jack.
• It feels fragile and unreliable. We're not talking iPhone 5 build. I'd happily pay $40 more for better build quality.
• Display is small and text layout is a bit off. I suspect it was designed to show characters, not Roman letters.
• Buttons take some push -- they are cheap!
• It comes with "PureTalk"; it's probably not the best PayGo solution but it's not entirely bad. For the US market I'd suggest H2O Wireless instead.

The Good

• Big buttons!
• Ringer is LOUD and voice loud even at intermediate settings.
• The instruction manual is large type.
• I could get a camera lanyard into the lanyard hoop with a bit of fiddling (essential accessory, should be bundled with phone).
• It speaks numbers as they are entered. Great feature!
• Seems to have very long battery life.
• The quick dial numbers will work well I think, even though we decided not to enable the SOS feature for now.
• Yes, the flashlight and radio are quirky, but my mother might actually come to like them.

I created a large print 1 page handout for my mother that included a simplified version of usage directions and the numbers I programmed in for her.

Facetime connections to elderly parents - a Logitech webcam problem

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was testing a Facetime videolink to my mother. It's not my first attempt. I'd tried Google Video Chat two years ago, but after months of struggle I gave up; it had, and still has, dismal usability. iChat was even worse. In all cases I've been using the excellent Logitech QuickCAm Vision Pro for Mac. (Still the best webcam ever sold, though I fear it's going away without a true replacement.)

After a few weeks of testing I can report that Facetime is a big usability improvement over Google Video Chat. I configured my mother's machine to auto-answer my calls; I can call from my phone or desktop and her machine will pick up. Facetime doesn't need to be running, OS X 10.6.x will launch it.

There's only one problem.

After I close the call at my end Facetime continues to run on her machine. It doesn't auto-exit (and, at this time, she can't see well enough to reliably quit the app) [1]. This means her webcam stays powered on [3]. Under some conditions, perhaps mostly time, the embedded OS that manages in-camera focus and exposure control crashes. The Webcam still works, but it focuses to infinity and the light levels are very low. If you pull the USB cable, wait a few seconds, then plug it in again, the camera will reset.

I'm considering a few workarounds. Firstly, it would be great if Apple officially supported auto-answer, so FT could then auto-exit on close. Alternatively I could

• Run a cron job to restart her machine once a night - thereby quitting FT and turning off her camera (see update - there's an easier fix - just set this in "Energy Saver"
• Run AppleScript to quit Facetime.app nightly. Unfortunately FT is not scriptable [2], but this article suggests options: How To Create a Security Cam with FaceTime for Mac and AppleScript | Mac|Life
• Resign myself to getting remote control of her computer working again (Windows has a big advantage here, RDP is light years ahead of Apple's VNC technology).

I'm leaning to the nightly restart as the simplest fix, but I should also try remote control -- again!

[1] As her macular degeneration has progressed we've been focusing on her iPad use.
[2] Apple needs to kill AppleScript, but I fear there'd be not replacement. 
[3] The webcam then stays in active mode, so it appears like it's always sharing an image.

See also:

• Gordon's Tech: FaceTime: AutoAnswer, URL, desktop 1 click call

Update:

When a Google search doesn't return much, it's often because the function one is seeking is now a part of the OS.

OS X Energy Saver allows one to schedule a restart. I'll schedule my mothers machine to reboot at 2am daily, that should clear out any dangling FT sessions.

Incidentally, there's a longstanding, perhaps ancient, UI flaw with OS X Energy Save scheduling. Look at this:

It looks like the first option is available for selection, but the second (schedule restart) is unselectable -- it's "grayed out".

Look carefully (it took me a while). The select box (drop down) on the first row is also grayed out. This is standard behavior. The reason the 2nd row is so confusing is that it starts with a drop down -- there's no preceding text to display in normal font. Despite appearances this row is available for selection. Just click the check box.

I deleted a prefs file and did a number of Google searches before I realized what was going on. I found others who made the same mistake ...

Elder Pad update: My mother's iPad continued

This post updates a prior article: Grandma's iPad - A user guide and review.

My son and I just spent a few days with my elderly parents. My mother's macular degeneration and rheumatoid arthritis continue their slow inexorable progress.  She is no longer able to use her Mac Mini, it's now primarily a sync service for her iPod, an image server, and perhaps a facetime connector [2][3].

She remains thrilled with her iPad, despite a need for a skill refresher [1]. I've just completed the OS 4 update; the added complexity of multitasking was offset by improved usability features we really wanted. Here's what I learned ...

• The big accessibility news with iOS 4 is really large font support for Mail (!), Contacts, and Notes. It's not perfect -- only parts of the UI are updated, but it's particularly well done with Mail. Mail messages now support scaling with finger gestures -- I'm pretty sure that's new.
• She never did get the hang of Voice Over and the triple tap to toggle VoiceOver. So we've switched to using the three finger double tap and three finger zoomed-image-scroll. It's probably my imagination, but it seems more readable than it once was. The UI for adjusting the zoom level is a bit occult -- triple double tap but hold on the 2nd tap and scroll 3 fingers up/down. She seems ok withe the adjustment I set.
• I turned scroll lock on, fixing it in landscape view. She liked the orientation swap -- but it introduces complexity. In some cases UIs change. I think a single UI set will help.
• I'm experimenting with putting some TV show episodes on her iPad.
• I wish I could turn off the rearrange / wiggling feature. It's a usability pain in the ass.
• Whatever happened to Retina-display friendly apps that were supposed to scale so well? Facebook.app sucks at double res an iPad and I thought it was retina display friendly.

These are the apps she uses -- they're all on Page 1. I've found very few third party apps worthwhile for her:

• Mail
• iPod
• Photos
• WeatherHD
• iBooks: still not using much, but maybe someday.
• Web page links saved as home screen icons (All support pinch/zoom)
  • BBC International
  • Montreal Gazette
  • Home page I made for her: links to family blog, British Royal Family news
  • Facebook: Most marginal web environment - way too complex
• Friendly: New. Not sure it's worthwhile. Does have scalable fonts, but wish I could turn off many of the features. Too many places to get lost.
• Checkers iPad (Paid app)
• Real Solitaire HD (Paid app, no ads)
• Virtuoso: 3 finger double tap can be tricky here.
• Videos: Until today I didn't realize that's where iTunes purchased TV shows and movies go. More useable than the iPod app.

These are embedded apps she doesn't use (all on page 2): Safari (uses via the web page links), App Store, iTunes, Game Center, Calendar, Maps, YouTube.

I'd love to buy more elder-friendly apps for her, but this is a largely untapped market [4]. So far Apple does the best, and even their best isn't so great.

[1] If she lived closer to me I'm sure she'd be a wizard at it, but she tends to lose skills since I'm not around to reinforce them.
[2] Upgrading to 10.6, which required a drive upgrade, cost us the mini's optical drive. Tip: If you take a apart a used Mini, keep the #$$$ dust out of the exposed drive slot.
[3] I've set Facetime to autoanswer, She has a lovely Logitech Pro webcam. We'll see how well this works, too early to report on.
[4] A tough market to reach. No interest to advertisers, has trouble buying software/apps, tends to have a limited lifespan as an active user. (A minimally-demented 75 yo geek is not in this market.)

See also:

• FaceTime: AutoAnswer, URL, desktop 1 click call
• iPad user guide: accessibility and more
• iPad for low vision elderly
• Gordon's Notes: Low vision iPad: Make the iPhone UI an option

FaceTime: AutoAnswer, URL, desktop 1 click call

FaceTime for Mac ($1) has an undocumented AutoAnswer feature ...

10.6: Enable AutoAnswer in FaceTime for the Mac - Mac OS X Hints

... defaults write com.apple.FaceTime AutoAcceptInvitesFrom -array-add +15205551212

... defaults write com.apple.FaceTime AutoAcceptInvitesFrom -array-add email@email.com ...

... defaults delete com.apple.FaceTime AutoAcceptInvitesFrom ...

The author used the "strings" command to uncover these options.

I've been looking for this for years [1] (die iChat die!), so, even though I generally avoid undocumented terminal entered preferences, I immediately set this up on my home iMac. I set it to AutoAnswer calls from my iPhone. Then I started up FaceTime and turned my screensaver on (screen is then locked) and placed a call.

With FaceTime on, a green light showed next to my iMac's "iSight".

The screensaver didn't change, but my desktop answered. My phone displayed the video input from the desktop and audio worked.

A few things to keep in mind as you test this ...

• Preferences are user specific. On a multi-user machine you have to enable it separately on each account.
• If FaceTime isn't running nothing happens.
• If the FaceTime window is showing the user gets a brief opportunity to cancel the call.
• If the FaceTime window is hidden it will answer, but there's no UI indication that a video chat is working.
• You can configure FaceTime to run on startup.

I'll be testing this out over the next few weeks, then I have to see if I can persuade my elderly parents that this is something worth enabling on their Mac. It would require an upgrade to 10.6, I think I'd left their machine on 10.5.

For an elderly user, or for anyone who wants a very simple way to create call you can create clickable desktop shortcuts or links in a web page ...

In Safari's address bar, type in one of the following URLs:

• facetime:// appleid
• facetime://email@address
• facetime://phone#

... select that URL in the address bar and drag it to the desktop.

When you do this you get a very dull file. Use IMG2ICNS (Free) to turn a photograph of the person you want to call into the file icon. I did this for my mother then put the icon with my picture on her desktop.

[1] Google could never come up with a decent control UI for Google Video Chat.

See also:

• Video Chat for elder parents over OS X: Google Video/Gmail, Google Notifier, Firefox and LogMeIn (4/2009 - a kludge that sort of worked)
• iChat - weirdest computer experience (2/2009 - iChat was really bad)
• User image propagation from OS X desktop to Gmail via iChat (2/2009)
• Apple's iChat (videoconferencing) problem (12/2008)
• Can't select Jabber or Google Talk for iChat? Here's one reason (5/2009)
• When a feature really is a feature: iChat AV's mirror mode (10/2007)
• The dead quality desktop webcam market (8/2007 - before the Logitech)
• Microsoft LifeCam VX-7000 vs. Logitech 9000 and VisionPro -- it's in the focus (12/2008)
• Logitech QuickCam Vision Pro webcam for OS X and XP: I love it (2/2009 - first really excellent and successful quality webcam. Still the best.)
• How: Automated XGA resolution JPG USB image capture at rate 1 FPS (webcam?) - rec.photo.digital | Google Groups (a 2003 usenet post of mine - for historical reasons)
• Streaming video over the net - Quicktime, Ustream.tv and Watershed (3/2009 - wow, I've tried everything)
• DIY video baby monitor and video broadcast review (7/2009)

PS. When reviewing some of these old links, I was struck by how many years we've been trying to get useable 1:1 videoconferencing on the net. We're talking at least 13 years of repeated failure, with only modest recent success with Skype and Google Video Chat. Apple has failed repeatedly. I wonder if this time they'll push it through, but I've thought we were close before.

iPhone silent in VoiceOver mode

My iPhone was silent in VoiceOver mode. I couldn't figure out the problem. The UI behaved as expected, and I could record and play back over the speaker, but when I tapped on a word nothing happened.

VoiceOver wasn't working.

I thought my phone was in silent mode, or that the volume was too low. It wasn't in silent mode thought, and pushing the volume up set the ringer to max. Still no VoiceOver though.

The trick was to try playing something on iPod.app. No sound came out, but in that mode I could change the play volume. That brought VoiceOver to life as well.

The volume mode VoiceOver uses is the same one iPod.app uses, but you can't set volume from VoiceOver; in that app the volume controls only change ringer volume. You can set it from iPod.app.

There must be another way to set VoiceOver volume, but even knowing the above I can't find it.

I don't see a lot of posts on this issue, so there's probably something else going on here ...

Update 4/17/11: Apple added a separate app/iPod volume control to a recent release of iOS 4. It's well hidden though. First get the multitasking icon list (tap home twice). Then swipe right to show the iPod controls. Then swipe right again. You will then see a volume control that is separate from the ring volume control.

Grandma's iPad - A user guide and review

I gave my 80 yo half-blind wheelchair bound arthritic mother her iPad.

She loves it. She's fascinated by it, her main complaint is that she loses track of time playing with it. She's using the Facebook.app (iPhone, double sized -- which is a feature, see below) to follow me and she composed her first email since her macular degeneration progressed.

She manages to drop it into conversations. The amazement and envy of a young supermarket employee is priceless.

As with her 2007 Mac Mini, which is increasingly hard for her to operate, I've written up a user guide for Grandma's Accessible iPad.

Very quickly (for time is short!) here are some related observations in bullet form:

• Games are a a good way to learn basic motions. She likes Solitaire, I paid a few dollars for an ad-free product.
• Ad-supported products are NOT elder-friendly. They're too unpredictable and confusing.
• Her devices are enrolled in MobileMe, one of our family accounts. I have a "GrandMa" user account on my laptop that syncs with that MobileMe account. That lets me remotely manager her contacts and calendar from my laptop. I'd use "Back to my Mac" from that laptop but I didn't have time to make it work with her ISP (currently blocks needed ports).
• Old-fashioned desktop-oriented web apps are the most accessible apps because they zoom very nicely. Mobile web apps are the least accessible low vision apps because they don't scale at all (pinch expand doesn't work) and they don't even have configurable fonts.
• Web apps that require authentication are a REAL problem. She absolutely cannot manage passwords. (Almost nobody can, really.)
• iPhone apps with retina-displays support set to double size are PERFECT for her. Very large UI, very simple UI.
• The more "features" in the OS the more troublesome. There's nothing in iOS 4 that is good for her -- it's just more complex (multitasking, "folders", etc). More features means more "traps" -- unexpected behaviors. (Like the "wiggles" if you rest a digit on an icon, but at least I could explain that.)
• It's really annoying that Apple made "zoom" (a very weak feature) incompatible with VoiceOver. They should at least use a rotor gesture for the VoiceOver screen blank feature so the triple finger tap could zoom.
• Apple's Mail.app is very hard to use with low vision. She has to pull out a magnifying glass (which is a feature of the iPad, they don't work well with desktop screens). Apple's font scaling only shows up in the message, nowhere else. It's really not a very user-friendly app.

See also these related posts (first 4 are iPad, 5th is OS X desktop):

• Accessible iPad - the best apps are web apps
• iPad user guide: accessibility and more
• iPad for low vision elderly
• Amazon Kindle for iPad - Accessibility fail
• OS X accessibility - radio shortcuts, shortcut cleanup, voice over and magnify
• OS X and Mac Mini tutorial and configuration guide - low vision elderly

Accessible iPad - the best apps are web apps

I'm getting to the end of configuring Grandma's iPad, but I'll call out one finding early.

For someone with low vision, Safari is the killer app. It has full screen reader support, and you can expand many (but not all) web pages with a pinch expand (spread apart).

This isn't true of all standalone apps.  For example, the pretty but limited NYT Editors' Choice for iPad doesn't seem to work with the screen reader and you can't change the small font. The NYT web site though, is a pleasure to navigate using Safari.

Alas, not all web sites are Safari zoom friendly. The iPad optimized Gmail site can't be zoomed, so it ends up being relatively inaccessible.

As I configure her device I'm adding several web sites that are pinch-zoom friendly. Ironically, these have to be generic sites. iPad optimized sites are much less low vision friendly.

iPad user guide: accessibility and more

I've been puzzled that my mother's iPad accessibility seemed undocumented. Turns out it's all in the PDF iPad User Guide (manual).

Did you know there was a 150+ page manual for the iPad? It's an Apple secret.

The manual is impressive, but it's a bit too complete. It describes some VoiceOver features that didn't make it into the shipping product (some rotor controls).

Here's the current list of iPad accessibility gestures, taken from the manual:

Navigate and Read

Tap: Speak item.
Flick right or left: Select the next or previous item.
Flick up or down: The effect varies depending on the Rotor Control setting. See “Using VoiceOver” on page 110.
Two-finger tap: Stop speaking the current item.
Two-finger flick up: Read all, from the top of the screen.
Two-finger flick down: Read all, from the current position.
Three-finger flick up or down: Scroll one page at a time.
Three-finger flick right or left: Go to the next or previous page (such as the Home screen or Safari).
Three-finger tap: Speak the scroll status (which page or rows are visible).
Four-finger flick up or down: Go to the first or last element on a page.
Four-finger flick right or left: Go to the next or previous section (for example, on a webpage).

Select and Activate

Double-tap: Activate selected item. Touch an item with one finger, tap the screen with another finger (“split-tapping”):
Activate item. Double-tap and hold (1 second) + standard gesture: Use a standard gesture.
The double-tap and hold gesture tells iPad to interpret the subsequent gesture as standard. For example, you can double-tap and hold, and then without lifting your finger, drag your finger to slide a switch.
You can use standard gestures when VoiceOver is turned on, by double-tapping and holding your finger on the screen. A series of tones indicates that normal gestures are in force. They remain in effect until you lift your finger, then VoiceOver gestures resume.
Two-finger double tap: Play or pause in iPod, YouTube, Voice Memos, or Photos. Start or pause recording in Voice Memos. Start or stop the stopwatch.
Three-finger double tap: Mute or unmute VoiceOver.

Three-finger triple tap: Turn the display on or off. (This is known as the "screen curtain" feature. For my mother it's a bug, not a feature. It's too easy to go from mute/unmute VoiceOver to blanking the screen.)

There's also far more to the zoom feature than I'd realized. This User Guide deserves a bit of publicity.

Amazon Kindle for iPad - Accessibility fail

I'm probably the only iPad owner who didn't know iBooks isn't pre-installed. It showed up when I visited the App Store from the iPad.

In the meantime I tried Amazon Kindle for iPad. It didn't look bad at first, but then I tried VoiceOver. It didn't work at first - then it crashed hard. I had to reset the iPad.

Since I bought the iPad for my visually impaired mother, this was not good.

That's a shame, because I would have liked to have bought books for her on Amazon then put them into a shared Kindle account.

Update: This is weird. Ever since the Kindle debacle, if I try to use VoiceOver the screen goes black. Turns out I'd activated the top secret "screen curtain" feature (limited documentation). A 3 finger triple tap turns it on and blanks the screen. I think this only happens if accessibility is turned on. If VoiceOver is off then three finger tap zooms the screen (not so useful actually, just enlarges pixels). For my mother the "Screen Curtain" will be a bug, not a feature!

iPad for low vision elderly

My 80 yo mother's macular degeneration is limiting her ability to read printed books. I took her to an Apple store this past weekend to see how she'd do with an iPad.

It took us a while to figure out how to configure it. The default accessibility settings assume no vision, so each letter is spoken before it can be selected and entered. Accessibility mode also changes gesture behavior to a less natural mode with a steeper learning curve.

We got the best results with the following setup:

• From the accessibility menu, configure the screen "home button" to enable VoiceOver on 3 consecutive pushes. (Her arthritis and neuropathy made this a bit tricky, but counting "1, 2, 3" as she pressed did the trick. Once she had the rhythm she could do it reliably.) This lets us turn it on and off as needed, and stay with the standard gestures much of the time.
• Enable three finger tap to zoom -- and three fingers to move the zoom image. This just magnifies pixels so it's of limited use but it can come in handy. It's normally not compatible with VoiceOver, but if you keep VoiceOver off normally, and enable it just when needed, this can work. From Safari you can get much nicer results from finger zooming web pages
• Disable the keyboard Voice assist.
• Slow the VoiceOver rate way down

In iBooks we set the book size to the largest available font. My mother was able to read the sample texts. She could also triple-tap enable VoiceOver, then double tap on the page to have VoiceOver (monotonously but clearly) read the page text.

She had less success with the Safari and Mail.app, but we didn't spend enough time practicing them. Because of the limited zooming of Mail.app and the finger zoom in Safari I wonder if she’ll do better using Gmail.

The iBook experiment was encouraging. She's a sucker for Apple look and feel so she was quite fond of the iPad.

I'm not sure it makes sense to buy her one. For one thing I'm not sure how I can get content on her iPad from my home. If Apple does a bit more work, next year's iPad would be a much better option (though in her age and health, a year is a very long time). If I do go ahead I'll configure it at my home then transfer the paired iTunes Library to her Mac Mini.

See also:

• Copilot vs. LogMeIn for supporting your parent's Mac
• OS X and Mac Mini tutorial and configuration guide
• Adaptive iPod for visually impaired person with limited manipulative ability
• iPhone apps on an iPad have advantages over fully native apps

Update 6/11/2010: I did buy her one. Some quick notes from today:

• Darn. I forgot my AMEX card with its 1 year warrantee extension.
• There are no ear buds in the box.
• The charger cable is hard to insert initially. I expect it will be easier with practice. I’ll modify the standard connector (tape, etc) so it’s easier for her to grip and insert.

I’ll write a post later (see update) on how I configure, which apps I use, book buying, how I manage iTunes prep here and then transfer to her, etc. (For one thing, I’ll setup a user account on a laptop for her iPad’s iTunes sync during initial configuration.)


Update 6/14/10: The Kindle is a dismal failure.

Update 6/17/10: Accessibility gestures are documented in the secret User Guide.

Update 8/18/10: Grandma's iPad - A user guide and review

Using an HDTV as a low vision monitor - initial test

We have a 21" CRT. We known nothing about television.

On the other hand, my mother likes television and she has lost much of her vision due to macular degeneration. She has difficulty reading the text on a large CRT set to 1024.x768. (LCDs display poorly at non-maximal resolution, and at maximal resolution the font sizes are far too small for her).

Modern HD TVs run at 30" screen at screen resolutions usually seen on 20" computer monitors. So a 30" HD TV might produce a more readable display.

To test this theory I took my MacBook to Best Buy and tried several displays using the mini-DVI to VGA adapter. The results were pretty bad; clearly VGA won't work. (For one thing it drives the display at 60 Hz when it needs 120.)

I didn't have an HDMI to DVI Adapter Cable so I couldn't test HDMI input results. I'm hoping they'll be much better. I'll update this post with future results.

Update 4/5/10: I found a 2006 Coding Horror post on using an HD TV as a monitor. I'd read it some time ago but, of course, had forgotten it. That old post was pretty positive, but I don't hear of people actually doing it now.

OS X accessibility - radio shortcuts, shortcut cleanup, voice over and magnify

Continuing in the theme of OS X accessibility (see also VisiKey and magnify toolbars), I've several additional recommended modifications to add to my old OS X accessibility configuration document (one day):

1. Keyboard shortcuts: OS X has numerous kb shortcuts. For many elders or persons with visual impairment they can be fumble finger traps waiting to confuse with unexpected behaviors. I turned off almost all of them on my mother's machine.
2. Voice Over: The Leopard "Alex" voice is a good improvement, and Voice Over itself is one of the rare true improvements in 10.5 over 10.4. I configured it to use the new voice and the Caption Panel. I mapped Voice Over toggle to the F13 key on my mothers VisiKey kb (underneath the key reads something like Print Screen, but to OS X this is the F13 key). She has kb stickers for visually impaired persons, but they're not needed for the VisiKey kb. Instead I pasted the V letter on the F13 (for voice over). She can read that. She doesn't like using voice over, but I'm hoping she'll get accustomed to it.
3. Shrink/magnify: I map these to F14 and F15, and pasted the - and + stickers on them. I set Zoom to a shade below the 2, it's easy to hold the key and zoom up. Minimum zoom is 0. She runs on a 19" CRT because they do far better than LCDs at displaying 1024x768 over a large surface. Obviously true scalable UIs would be a great benefit.
4. Radio shortcuts: more below.

I'm very pleased with the radio shortcut. I rediscovered this myself, then found this explanation afterwards ...

How to create a radio shortcut using iTunes | sync :: the tech & gadgets blog

... while the built-in radio streamer isn’t much of a surprise to those who spent time navigating around iTunes, but what you might not be aware of a way to place an icon on your desktop that links you to your favourite station – and with added functionality...

1. Open iTunes and click on the radio tab on the left-hand side of the screen and select a station with the kind of music you like...

2. Once you have a station you like ... drag it onto your computer’s desktop (or copy and paste) and you’ll see an icon (shortcut) that immediately begins the audio stream when you double-click on it.

This is great, because iTunes, though improving now, is still hard for my mother to navigate. The drag and drop for stations (not, alas, for albums or tunes) creates .webloc files, which open in iTunes. I can mix these with shortcuts to BBC iPlayer stations (like BBC 3 and BBC 4 - there are some quirks there though) and with shortcuts pointing to the physical iTunes albums on her hard drive.

These are easy to navigate in the folder paradigm she's accustomed to.

Update: The radio shortcut has an odd side-effect. Each time you click on one of these it launches iTunes, but it also downloads a playlist file to the desktop from the source station. Kind of messy!

Accessibility in 10.5.7 - the magnify toolbars and VisiKey

(See accessibility posts for prior tips.)

I've upgraded my mother's Mini from 10.4 to 10.5.7 and installed a VisiKey keyboard.

I made the move to 10.5 because 10.4 is nearing end of life, and I thought 10.5 was becoming reasonably well baked (wrong, wrong). I also wanted the option of using 10.5's mediocre iChat in place of Google's elder unfriendly Google Video Chat. Lastly, since I no longer have a 10.4 machine at home and I use LogMeIn to manage her machine I wanted her on the same OS as our family.

I installed the VisiKey because her macular degeneration has progressed far enough that the need to see the keys has overcome her fondness for the cool look of her Apple keyboard (she's not a geek, she really does like "coolness").

The VisiKey's not bad, but there's a bug in the driver installer. In a multi-user machine you have to manually add the VisiKey driver to each user's LogIn list. Without the driver most of the kb features work, but not the "Internet", Email, and Search buttons.

Although I'm no great fan of 10.5 (and believe me, I'm going to take my time with 10.6!), there are a few accessibility improvements. In several app toolbars (Safari 4beta, Mail.app 3.0) there are Smaller/Bigger buttons like these (grayed out here so very murky):

Ok, so I lied. They're not automatically there, you have to customize the toolbars to get them (right click  on toolbar then choose customize). You have to modify the toolbars in Mail.app for browsing, new message, reply, etc. In some cases, like "New message" you can add these controls but they don't seem to do anything [1]. In reading mode, however, they do work [1].

It helps.

I also found the album view in iTunes 8.1.1 isn't bad for low vision use.

So a few accessibility improvements, though so far they don't outweigh the misery of 10.4 to 10.5 migration for me.

Update 5/31/09: There are bugs here. In some modes they enlarge all text, in other modes you have to select the text first. Looks like the responsible dev teams weren't always on speaking terms.

Video Chat for elder parents over OS X: Google Video/Gmail, Google Notifier, Firefox and LogMeIn

This is a bit complex to describe fully, but I hope these hints will be of use.

Briefly, I wanted to be able to establish a video chat connection to my elderly parents. Since we both use OS X and both have at least one Intel machine I considered iChat and Google Video Chat. I didn’t consider Skype or Yahoo because that would introduce new account issues and because, as best I can tell, Google has the best technology and no worse reliability than Skype or Yahoo.

I was unimpressed with iChat; it needs to be shot (see also). That left Google Video Chat, but it has a hellacious user interface. In fact, it has the lowest usability of just about any app I routinely use. Not well suited for my 80% blind and very arthritic mother. (I’m sure that will change when Google integrates GVC with Google Voice, but really Google needs all those usability people who’ve recently quite in disgust.)

At the same time I was exploring remote maintenance options and finally settled on LogMeIn Free.

This is the combination of technologies I’ve now cobbled together:

• Gmail/Google Video Chat: My mother’s email is managed via a Google account, even though she reads it using OS X Mail (IMAP). So she had an account.
• Google Notifier: In theory this keeps my mother logged in to Gmail so she doesn’t have to know her username and password. In practice I’m not sure this works; these day’s I might try FF with local caching instead.
• Logitech QuickCam Pro
• Firefox: For better or worse this is what my mother is accustomed to
• LogMeIn Free.
• I created a deskbar shortcut with is simple a Gmail desktop shortcut with the iChat icon pasted into it. So it looks like a Chat app.

Here’s how it works

1. I initiate the call from my Macbook using Firefox
2. I use LogMeIn to take control of my mother’s machine using Safari. Then I “answer” my own call (not hard).
3. I resize the window for my mother then drop the remote control connection.

Using FrontRow for visually impaired OS X users

Front Row is designed for remote control at a distance. So the UI is pretty good for someone with poor vision, and it's much simpler than iTunes.

On the other hand, the remote is only intuitive to computer geeks. It's also difficult for someone with motor problems to use; the menu button, for example, is flush.

You can improve the menu button by putting fuzzy side velcro tape on it, but an alternative is to use the undocumented Front Row Key commands.

Undocumented, save for a generous blogger who compiled a list. See his site for the full list, here's my annotated version of an excerpt of it. Note that I used Keyboard Preferences to change the activation/quit key to F13. Unfortunately the F13 key doesn't behave exactly like the Menu button -- it starts and quits rather than moves in and out of menus.

rgbdream.com - Front Row Key Commands

Activation

Enter Front Row	F13
Quit Front Row	F13 (actually any key not used by FR will exit)

Menu actions

Up	Up-arrow
Down	Down-arrow
Select	Space
Previous menu	Escape

Playback controls

Play/Pause	Space
Rewind	Left-arrow
Fast-forward	Right-arrow
Previous track	Command + Left-arrow
Next track	Command + Right-arrow

Volume

Volume Up	Command + Up-arrow
Volume Down	Command + Down-arrow

Depending on your context sometimes the arrow keys also navigate menus and control volume.

I'm experimenting to figure out the right balance of use of a modified remote and the keyboard. I think the remove may win overall, but using the arrow and enter keys might be useful. You can use the kb volume keys to change volume.

Toggle grayscale display on OS X with this AppleScript

I was looking for something that would give my mother a few more months of computer use. The OS X grayscale accessibility option looked interesting, but there's no keyboard shortcut for this option.

I thought I could record an AppleScript shortcut, but the accessibility pane is not scriptable. (Apple had, I think, a reasonable accessibility record with Mac Classic, but they tossed that out with OS X. They've been notably half-hearted for years, but some recent threats from Massachusetts may inspire future improvements.).

Apple recommends using System Events, but that's way beyond my limited AppleScript skills. I've made several stabs at figuring out AppleScript, but the damned language just annoys me. I wish they'd deprecate the original and adopt Python's syntax, scoping, etc.

But I digress.

Baltwo, a generous Apple forum poster [1], has written a post with the AppleScript System Events script I was looking for. It works in 10.5.5 ...

Apple - Support - Discussions - Keyboard shortcut to switch between ...

tell application 'System Preferences' to activate
delay 1
tell application 'System Events'
tell process 'System Preferences'
click the menu item 'Universal Access' of the menu 'View' of menu bar 1
click the radio button 'Seeing' of the first tab group of window 'Universal Access'
click the checkbox 'Use grayscale' of tab group 1 of window 'Universal Access'
end tell
end tell
tell application 'System Preferences' to quit"

The script, of course, will break with significant UI changes to the Universal Access pain. It works for now, I'll test it out with 10.4.11 though I think some of the System Events scripting might require 10.5.

Apple has greatly improved their AppleScript support site by the way. I've thought for years that AppleScript would go the way of OS X Services, but it continues on.

[1] You can now "subscribe" to users, and I've "subscribed" to his posts. I wonder sometimes if these are real people, or pseudonyms for Apple employees. written a very large number of forum posts.