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Comment by rootoor | Hacker News Reader

My 97 year old grandpa has a MacBook Pro and a few years back he was constantly on the phone with my mom trying to fix issues. We installed a Remote Desktop server so my mom could fix things quickly. After a visit we diagnosed the problem. Because of his poor motorskills, he was clicking and clicking-and-dragging things by accident. To mitigate this, we installed some software that locked the applications in the dock and got him a mouse with a ball you move with your thumb. The problems disappeared overnight.

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You should get him an iPad or consider it. My grandpa who’s 94 won’t use anything else. That said he’s probably used to the setup now.

My family recently got my mother's parents (100 and 98 who live independently) a grandpad. It's a closed network social media, meaning people have to be invited to it. It is designed for old people. They figured out how to navigate it themselves in ten minutes. It can call, video call, and leave mass voicemails.

From the children/grandchildren perspective, nothing has changed as it has Facebook and instagram integration, so we dont have to post on it directly.

My grandmother (100) just phoned me using FaceTime on her iPad. I find this insanely cool. She was born during World War 1, experienced World War 2 and is now able to enjoy modern technology to get in touch with her family. The only issue she has is accidentally touching the screen.

There is a setting for that in iOS. It’s somewhere in accessibility

My dad never was comfortable with PCs and I’m quite sure that Mac, Linux, whatever wouldn’t have made the slightest bit of difference. He just never got comfortable with the whole mental model. Gave him an iPad. Problem solved.

That’s pretty interesting. Definitely something that should be addressed by accessibility.

On the iPhone they have some UI accommodations that might help with this sort of thing. I needed them for when I would try to do something with Waze while my wife is driving. There is nothing to brace your arm with i her Jeep from the passenger side and it’s quite a stretch, so my hand is bobbing all over the place. Those are times I wish Siri could do more UI interaction, like “press ok.”

I haven’t looked for that kind of equivalent mouse interaction motor control accommodation on macOS.

I had the same experience with my father on KDE. I tried locking it but he would somehow screw it up and toolbars would be all over the place. Gnome with it's lack of configuration has been fine.

I think leaving the configuration in config files or a separate app (like tweak tool) is much better for novices and power users.

That “mouse” is what we called a trackball in the olden days. I still kinda miss running one, but I ran out of spares for the model I loved and nothing else makes me want to switch lately. Maybe it’s time to try again.

FYI, if you set him up with a managed account, you can Lock the Dock without 3rd party software

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