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

Google search result rendering scrambled in Safari

This is what Safari 4 is showing me when I search Google (click for larger image):

A non-moveable "sponsored links" drop down ad is obscuring the left side of the screen and the text below the search button is jumbled.

This is in plain old Safari 4.

WTF?!

Bing works perfectly.

Update: It's broken in Safari 5 too on this machine_account, but it's fine on other machines and other user accounts on this machine. Emptying the cache didn't help. So I reset Safari - restoring default font sizes, clearing cookies, etc. That worked:

I'll change my fonts to larger sizes and see if the bug returns.

Parental controls: Apple and Google joint fail

After an epic struggle, I've given up on Apple's parental controls. They never worked very well, but Google's change to https seems to have broken them completely. I can't enable Google Calendar or Gmail access without also enabling image search. I'm not even sure I can allow allow Google access while blocking YouTube (the rules seem to be changing quickly).

It's a bleedin' mess.

I'm currently evaluating Net Nanny and Safe Eyes, but really I don't want either of them. I need a net appliance I can configure for our entire network. Those devices, however, costs thousands. Or I need to give up on Google.

I'm seriously considering the latter. If MobileMe were to offer Google-class calendaring I could use Bing for family search. I think OS X Parental Controls may still work with Microsoft's offerings.

I have to imagine Windows 7 parental controls are far better than Apple's, otherwise vast numbers of parents must be in full denial ...

Update 6/9/10: xkcd - Now I get it. So this is how things work for those that don't realize quite how bad things are ...

Update 6/14/10: I might be having some limited success with the combination of ...

1. OS X Parental Controls: whitelist only, with the https://74.125.45.100 trick and our Google Apps family domain.
2. Google's lock safe search set to the most severe filtering. It's not obvious, but I think you can log in with a parent's personal iGoogle account, lock safe search, then log out. You must, however, enable always receive cookies which is probably a serious security risk. Clearing cookies will clear this, but Parental Controls makes that harder to do.

Update 6/17/11: A comment suggests iBoss Home, a combination of wireless router and a subscription service.

Buzz - getting closer, still not there

Last February Buzz was ailing. Google's been trying to fix it ever since.

I gave it another try today, and there have been real improvements. You can almost achieve, with significant pain, the equivalent of separating Buzz posts from your public google profile. (Google has not implemented the obvious fix -- an option to exclude all Buzz activity from the public profile.)

The main fix so far is that each of the routes to a Buzz post can be configured so the default post is restricted to a set of contacts with associated email addresses that belong to one or more Gmail (Google) Contact Groups.

This includes Buzz posts from Gmail's Buzz UI, from the iPhone Buzz web app, and from each of the "Connected Sites"you can define in Gmail Settings (Buzz).

Configuring these Buzz posts routes, however, is complex and tedious. Each has its own independent settings. So you have to enter the same sets of Groups in Gmail as in iPhone as in Connected Sites. For Connected Sites you must first click "Add", then click "Edit" then apply the settings.

Of course if you later create a new Contacts Group for limited (Private) Buzz sharing, you'll need to revisit all previous settings.

Yech.

Google still needs to:

1. Have a single Buzz configuration that's shared among all clients.
2. Allow users to separate their user profile from their Buzz stream.
3. Ask the guy they hired away from Palm to fix Google Contacts. Puh-lease.

There's certainly progress, but we're still a long way from where we need to be.

Windows Live Writer - beware the Trojan Horse updater

I received a notice to update my beloved Windows Live Writer* yesterday. I unthinkingly downloaded the installer.

Fool.

It was a Trojan Horse. No, not a "Trojan" as in a carrier for anonymous malware, "Trojan Horse" in the historic sense of a gift containing unwanted vermin.

The installer has plagued my system with a suite of Windows Live products that I don't want and that are almost certain to reduce system stability. Now I have to tediously uninstall:

• Live Call
• Live Messenger
• Photo Gallery
• Live Family Safety
• Mail
• various Outlook add-ins
• heaven knows what else

Now you know. Don't make my mistake.

*The only good, new, Microsoft product in five years. An acquisition of course. Microsoft has since abandoned it; I think the original (Minnesota?) team is gone. Microsoft is doomed to immense wealth and mediocrity.

Google Calendar vs. iPhone: My reminders are gone

It's been a while since I've had a good Synchronization is Hell story. This one is just a small reminder of the nastiness of divergent application and data models.

The reminders on some of my yearly recurring (birthday) Google Calendar events are gone. The Reminder heading shows up, but there are no choices beneath it.

Google Calendar syncs with my iPhone using the CalDAV standard (built on iCalendar data model, so really iCalendar is what I care about) [1]. If I inspect the same event on my iPhone I see reminders set for 2 days and 14 days.

The 2 day reminder is a valid choice on the iPhone. The 14 day reminder is not [2] - it is supported only on Google Calendar. If I edit the event on iPhone I lose the 14 day reminder (probably doesn't work anyway).

No big deal. I'm sure my relatives understand why I don't get their 80th birthday cards to them on time.

Not.

Sigh. One more reminder that synchronization really is hellish.

[1] The Wikipedia page on CalDAV is ancient. At this time ActiveSync works better with Google/iPhone than CalDAV/iCalendar , but with OS 3 there's only one ActiveSync source per phone. That one is taken by work/Exchange Server.

[2] I do so miss the power of 13 yo Palm Calendaring with DateBk.

See also:

• Synchronization is Hell
• What the iPhone needs is Gorilla Haven’s DateBk6
• Gordon's Notes: The descent of the PDA: Newton, Palm, Blackberry and iPhone

--My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Appigo ToDo.app has lost RTM sync services

Appigo has a very fine task management application called "ToDo.app". I've used it for about two years. It allowed me to synchronize tasks to one of two cloud services: Toodledo and Remember the Milk.

About a year ago Toodledo introduced their own task management application, but Appigo's sync still worked on both RTM and Toodledo. Appigo also added a desktop sync app, though it's remained in 'beta'.

More recently RTM introduced their own iPhone app. On May 12th they turned off sync support for all their customers who used Appigo ToDo.app.

Appigo Todo and RTM

... Late Tuesday night, May 11, 2010, we (Appigo) were contacted by the folks at Remember The Milk via email in which they informed us they had disabled sync access for both Todo for iPad and Todo for iPhone. This service has been available in two of our apps previously (Todo and Todo Lite for iPhone). Todo for iPad was a natural extension and no sync code was changed to support Todo for iPad. We don't agree with their assessment, but including this service in Todo for iPad violated their developer agreement, which was only valid for Todo for iPhone...

A recent ToDo.app update disables RTM support -- since it's no longer available.

There's nothing about this on the RTM web site. For that matter, it's very hard to find anything about this on Appigo's web site either! The release history page, for example, says nothing about this update.

I doubt RTM will be in business in six months.

As for Appigo, they're not handling this very well. They need a lot more material on their main web site pages about what's going on.

Toodledo, where I'm a paying customer, is the only party that's coming out of this looking good. I like their "data freedom" approach to managing customer information.