Ask HN: How to manage phones and PCs for elderly parents? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to manage phones and PCs for elderly parents?

278 pointsthepuppet33r370 comments

I have a friend whose parents are getting up in years. They're still functional enough that they want to be independent and surf the web, check their stocks, etc. He has some remote desktop software installed on their PCs, and antivirus installed and locked down. But they keep destroying their PCs with downloads, keep turning airplane mode on for their phones and can't figure out how to disable it, and recently his dad got in a cleaning mood and deleted a bunch of system files and bricked his machine. He's almost to the point of setting up an Intune tenant just to onboard and lock down his parents devices. Any suggestions on how to manage phones and PCs of the elderly to keep them functional but useful?

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Put them on Apple gear, seriously.

Lifelong Android user, and I know nothing about Apple, but when it came time for them to upgrade from their OG Razr's last year, I was at a crossroads. These people are tech illiterate. I ended up telling them to buy IPhone.

Believe it or not, they mostly figured it all out pretty easily. They still get confused and scared by FB video calls coming in, but otherwise are able to talk, text, use social media, etc. So much so they even bought an iPad.

It seems the reason I like Android - tons of options and customizability, are the exact opposite of what an older user wants from their device.

I got my 90 year old grandma to use an iPad. The other day I saw her switching languages via the keyboard to search for a video on YouTube using a combination of Chinese and English, and I was dumbfounded.

It's a true testament to the intuitiveness of Apple UX.

Switched parents over to Mac/iPhone years ago too. They still have issues, but it's usually something like "I maximized my window, how do I get out of that?". I wish Apple would release a "dumb mode", which removes 90% of the already limited UX features of macOS/iOS.

> I wish Apple would release a "dumb mode", which removes 90% of the already limited UX features of macOS/iOS.

Have you seen Assistive Access? https://support.apple.com/guide/assistive-access-iphone/welc...

"Assistive Access is a distinctive iOS experience, with more focused features and a simplified user interface, which allows people with cognitive disabilities to use iPhone with greater ease and independence."

I don’t think many at all are aware at the lengths that Apple goes to wrt accessibility features. It is astonishing.

There are blind people who can type faster than I (sighted) can on an iPhone.

Thanks for the reminder on this… definitely need to give it a shot.

One big issue with older folks is change. While the Assistive Access might be awesome, making such a significant change will be tough.

I wish Apple would be consistent with their reasoning abilities :/ Much of it is great, so it's that much more confusing for people when there are things that make no sense.

The gestures on iPhones come to mind. I'm used to them and find them indispensable now, but what? Swipe down on one side and it brings me some controls, swipe down on the other and I see my lock screen? Where am I? What's happening? No reason or logic.

I switched back to an iPhone SE, and it’s so much better at UX. There’s a single home button that removes you from any app. Swiping down from the top anywhere brings up your notifications. Swiping up from the bottom anywhere brings up controls. Double tapping the home button while locked brings up your credit cards, which are also authorized because the home button has a fingerprint reader. Holding down the power button brings you to the power off screen. This phone has functionally been an upgrade in usability across the board compared to my iPhone mini.

This an example of the worst possible UX imo. There is literally zero affordances or discoverability for those gestures.

Smartphones in general tend to completely ignore the fundaments of human interface design.

It used to be that swiping down would lock the screen and swiping up would show Control Center. But when iPhones lost the home button, swiping up took up its click behaviours. Swiping down from the left for locking the screen and swiping down from the right to show Control Center is indeed somewhat awkward, but it’s not immediatelly clear to me what alternative they could’ve gone with that would leave you with the same level of quick access as before.

1. It's your notification tray, you know, the thing that's been default behavior of swiping down on smartphones since their inception. 2. It's not one side or the other either. It used to be that anywhere you swiped down opened the notification tray. Now only the right side has a different effect, opening control center. The notification tray still takes over two-thirds of the swipe-down space at the top.

> It's a true testament to the intuitiveness of Apple UX.

I think it's much simpler than that. For normal people, the aesthetics of an experience is the experience. There is no functionality, form is functionality.

Apple does this more than anyone else as a side effect of different design goals. An iPhone competes with the 1990s-era cable TV-equipped television, not an Android phone, especially for older adults. In that comparison, you can see how the iPhone "UX" could be "improved:" how could it achieve the same level of effortlessness as switching a channel, an idea of an aesthetic experience distilled to a brand name and a button press, and then having the aesthetic experiences you like transferred to you continuously, nonstop, throughout the day, affordably?

You are talking about watching YouTube specifically, and consider that if your grandma could "just" watch a channel with a mix of Chinese and English content she "likes," she would be even "happier." I am not trying to get into the normative argument over which aesthetic experiences are more meaningful or preferred or whatever. It's a way of looking at things differently, without the myopic point of view of frontend web development.

Once you deconstruct your lived experience of watching your grandma, "Apple UX" looks more like a marketing idea that is inferior to many alternatives.

That's a bit of an unusual way of looking at iPhones. They seem to do much the same as Android phones and very different from 90s TVs especially when if comes to taking photos, doing banking, making calls and the like.

In Android, there's a keyboard icon on the interface, you click it and choose your keyboard language. It's two clicks. Is the Apple one more intuitive?

On my Pixel phone keyboard I have two ways to switch language: Holding the spacebar gives me a list labeled "Change keyboard" with six options whereas clicking the keyboard icon in the lower-right corner gives me a similar list except the title is "Choose input method", the options are in a completely different order, the options have slightly different names ("English (US) QWERTY" vs "English (US) (QWERTY) Gboard"), the list uses radio buttons instead of a checkmark, and includes an option for "Google Voice Typing".

These might seem like minor issues to us, but they can derail non-technical users who may be confused why the list looks different from the last time they switched languages. And this lack of coordination between elements is par for the course for Google design. Not saying there aren't examples of bad design from Apple, but most of their products seem to have someone in a position of authority who pays attention to detail and their issues seem less like oversights than bad decisions.

It’s identical.

Well the difference with the iPhone is the actual phone works for people of all abilities so the keyboard is actually accessible.

All my elderly family running Android have been pwned in some way or another.

Or, a lot of old people are still pretty capable. My aunt is 90 and she manages her laptop and phone just fine.

I am not impressed at all by Apple's UX. Inconsistencies abound, and there are lots of hidden gestures and actions that you have no clue about unless you stumble upon them or someone shows you. It might be better than Android, but that's a low bar.

Changing Green circle from "maximuze" to "full screen" with no way to revert it - yes, I'm sure there's some sketchy kmod or whatever - is one of the most baffling decisions Apple has made.

I’m not defending the choice, but there are some alternatives:

* Press ⌥ while hovering over the green circle. The icon changes to a + sign and clicking it uses the maximise behaviour.

* Double-clicking the title bar.

* From the menubar: Window > Zoom.

Apple needs to bring back At Ease: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease

The intuitiveness of the Apple UI is not a given. A friend of mine was one of the first Mac developers, and an Apple man since then. He's old now, and both he and his wife grouse about the iOS UI and how unintuitive and difficult it is. Even my wife, also a lifelong Apple fan, finds herself frustrated when attempting to do tasks with her iPhone much more obscure than "launch app". Like the iPhone has a built-in Apple TV remote, but to use it you have to swipe down from the upper right where the clock is, then press the button that looks like an Apple TV remote (assuming you know what one looks like). Not something you can easily discover or figure out on your own. I can't even keep straight where to swipe from.

I think some time after Jony Ive took over Apple's design department, design wankery supplanted human factors. The original Mac UI was made functional and easy to discover, and then made pretty. Modern iOS is made pretty and clever with things like "pinch to zoom", but the emphasis is not on making things easy to discover or making it clear what you can do (but the "launch app" case is pretty well solved for).

The Apple hardware also does nothing to protect against tech support scams.

One of the most important, and basic, things to do is make sure ad blockers are installed on devices and/or on a firewall. This matters before a broader decline in cognitive functionality too.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a blanket ban against all digital advertising for certain age groups in the EU within the next 10 years.

I found that iPhone and iPad work great, but my parent also wanted a computer and I went with it. 95% of my support calls are regarding something with the computer.

The iMac really is just subtracting value from their life. The phone and tablet are fantastic, but I want to hire someone to break into the home and steal that computer.

Regarding exiting from fullscreen, you can suggest to them to "hover" over the traffic lights, for some extra tips

If you're looking for a limited mode, why'd you get them a macOS computer instead of an iPad with a keyboard?

For my dad, he occasionally composes Word documents and uses other MacOS software for his business, so finding analogous iPad software and teaching him how to use that wouldn't be worth the effort.

iPad could probably work for my mom, but she just uses hand-me-down macs from my dad or me/my siblings.

I'd agree until few months ago, but now my wife's dad lucidity is degrading pretty quickly.

Until few years ago he was a proficient digital photographer with advanced Photoshop knowledge. He was definitely tech literate and also have used Apple gears its infancy (the first guy in town to own an iPhone).

But now he forgets his passcode, or the fact that he can just use his thumb to unlock the phone. He keeps deleting his bank app and then goes to the nearby computer store shop to get it back. He also saved a scammer number claiming to be his daughter with a new phone (well, actually asked a friend to save it because he forgot how to do it).

Because we live abroad it's quite hard to check on him and his device to make sure he's safe and have been wondering myself how to best deal with the situation.

Next time you visit put him in your IOS family and install parental controls. Then disable contact updates, remove permission to delete apps etc...

Nice interpretation of parental controls, with the older parent being the one controlled!

We did the same thing (but with Android) for my mother-in-law, who is starting to suffer from dementia (and literally clicks on everything). It's the same way I manage my kids' phones and it works pretty well.

thanks, I'll try! I don't have kids so didn't really think of this

Everything you describes sucks but I dunno why you seem to think it's an Apple issue?

If somebody's lucid enough to use technology, put them on Apple stuff. If they're not lucid enough to use technology then Apple or Android doesn't matter – both are unusable.

I am an Android developer (and user) with 14 years of professional experience, and I put my elderly mother on iPhone many years ago.

For me it came simply down to the simplicity of the iOS system. There are fewer clicks, buttons and functions for her to accidentally get into.

Another reason is also that my other siblings (and all of the grandchildren ) are all on iPhone, so I am not a her only IT support person in case one was needed ASAP when I would be unavailable.

Personally I don't enjoy the feel of iOS but for her it is perfect.

>Believe it or not, they mostly figured it all out pretty easily. They still get confused and scared by FB video calls coming in, but otherwise are able to talk, text, use social media, etc. So much so they even bought an iPad.

For the 99% of use cases elderly people have with a phone, what exactly is it you imagine that Apple is doing better than Android? You click an icon to text, phone or browse the web. The experience is nearly identical.

The idea that Android has lots of customization, but Apple doesn't, is a myth; even Apple has far more options to tweak than the average use is ever going to have to get into.

We had that same experience. My wife’s grandmother was 90-something when I got her an Android tablet thinking it would be easy to set up. She kept doing stuff that broke the experience for her. It would go home when she was trying to do something else, and wouldn’t go home when she wanted to. I can’t remember everything but it was enough to really frustrate her. After a while switched to an iPad and 90% of the issues went away. Only one that didn’t was taking a pic with a camera. There was something we couldn’t sort: (IIRC, it’s been a while) moving the red button to the left instead of right side so her good hand could click it easily. And she sometimes still turns wifi off. But that’s it, and she’s now 103. Maybe they’re better now. Not going to test that!

The problem I guess I was referring to was options between mfgs. Pixel's Android isn't Samsung's Android, which isn't Oneplus's Android, and so on. Not just different looks and layouts, all different default apps, settings menus, features, and so on. Heck my wife even gets frustrated between Samsung updates, as they often change something she can't figure out how to get back.

Generally if you ask any IPhone user how to do X, or even Google it, the results should work exactly the same on your phone. This is definitely -not- the case for Android.

Consistency throughout the user experience and, most importantly, consistency through time.

Macos ui is largely frozen in 2002ish

IOS is frozen in 2008ish

This is why blind people only ever use iOS.

(Linux user myself)

> This is why blind people only ever use iOS.

That's not why. It's because iOS has great features for the blind, and iOS developers care about accessibility and making good apps.

I cannot align the 3 apps the person uses on the thumb side of the home screen and have the rest unused. I have no dedicated back button THIS IS THE WORST for a 98 year old with very shaky hands.

Consistency? Everything is all over the place for different apps.

> Consistency throughout the user experience and, most importantly, consistency through time.

> Macos ui is largely frozen in 2002ish

> IOS is frozen in 2008ish

This is verifiably extremely incorrect? Lots of things about the core UX of both platforms have changed since then. Heck, even turning an iPhone off isn't as simple as "press and hold the power button" anymore.

Apple moved off skeuomorphism in 2013. I agree there haven’t been big changes since then except maybe the deep press.

Heck, Ill double down.

Go back to the late 80s and compare Mac GUI to window's. There are still important themes in the Mac UI that remain, specifically the menu bar at the top. I could get around System 1.0 even though Ive never touched a classic OS mac.

Win 2.0? I grew up with pre-95 windows and Id be completely lost.

Id go further back, but then Id be comparing a GUI to a TUI. (Which to be fair are superior to GUIs)

Android phone will randomly stop working for some reason nobody's ever heard of and possibly with specifics tied to whatever particular phone you got, that's what Apple does better. That and not getting viruses.

Funny, for me its opposite. And I never saw a virus on Android in the last 10 years.

Simple example: Android has a airplane mode toggle in the notification tray, iPhone does not. No surprise that once I put my elderly family on iPhones all problems of accidently enabling airplane mode magically went away.

Nearly everything UX related is better in iOS.

Default logo sizes are larger, settings menus are basically the same no matter the device, software and hardware are coupled and designed by the same company making everything snappier. The subtle.design difference also come into play.

I use Android myself, but it is a fact that Apple is superior in UX, which is unsurprising given that they are obsessed with UX as a company in general and the whole ecosystem is designed by themselves alone, while Android is designed and developed by many players. Even a 2 year old can use iPhones and iPads.

I must live in a parallel world because to me Apple is the king of hidden shortcuts which are hard to discover for beginners.

Multiple fingers gestures doing different things, hidden swipe menus and features depending on the offset of where you swiped, that's all very hard for non experienced users.

Not that Android is perfect, I'd say it's still not great either in that regard but the UI is more discoverable for sure for beginners.

I really miss the win2k era in terms of user research and UX, sure it didn't look the best on screenshots but it was made to be as discoverable as possible.

> Nearly everything UX related is better in iOS

That's funny because I heard my friend say this at work yesterday when I suggested that he should gift his mother an iPhone:

"Oh my mother would have too much difficulty switching from Android to iOS. I know because I use iPhone and things that have dedicated buttons in some Android phones are gestures in iOS. Like the back button for example."

My wife does an impeccable job of managing smartphones and tablet computers for many older relatives (and some younger tech-challenged ones too, I suppose) and they're also all on Apple gear.

But it's not because the users understand Apple stuff better. They can learn the core workflows they use on any device, and they have most of the important parts written down anyway.

The primary reason she put them on Apple was so that they would have mostly the same problems and she could learn from one and apply to the others. I suppose this matters more the more relatives you manage devices for. But as you say, the range of opportunities one can get with Androids or PCs is much wider – which translates to a wider range of problems also.

Not my experience.

If they only use basic functions (phone, text, email) then Android/Pixel + Chromebook is the way to go imo. One login for everything, including YouTube + music family plan. If they screw up the Chromebook just factory reset it and they're back where they left off.

I think iPhone being easier for seniors is a well advertised myth.

What challenges did you face with them and iPhone?

Did you actually try to get someone older to use the swipe gestures that are mandatory on new iPhones? Many of them can't be disabled even through a11y or provisioning options and constantly frustrate.

Another massive issue is that iOS doesn't really mark clickable elements / buttons anymore - after iOS7 redesign it's really hard for people to recognize what's a tappable element. Especially since a lot of apps now have their own UI design language.

You don't notice these things until you try to teach someone non-tech savvy. Then you notice just how inconsistent and horrible to use the new OSes are. Even Apple ones.

> What challenges did you face with them and iPhone?

  - Difficulty typing on the tiny SE screen
  - Can't send text messages from the computer (no Messages on Chromebook)
  - Accidentally muting contacts all the time, so missing calls
  - Butt dialing all the time
  - Not being able to get back to the phone screen to find the speaker button and other basic ui functions were not intuitive
  - Spanning multiple ecosystems is a recipe for confusion (Apple photos vs Google photos, for example), and if you have to choose one Google wins (youtube, docs, chromecast, etc, etc).
  - Tons of text spam

Going all-in on Apple (iPad instead of Chromebook) would make some of these better, but still worse overall imo. Just look at the iPhone SE next to the basic Pixel A, the SE looks like a tiny antique (the bezel really hurts).

That's still way too easy to fuck up. They need something less "open" than MacOS.

After my mom in law got scammed out of a few hundred euros I confiscated her laptop and moved her to a Google ChromeBook.

That's quite locked down and a few years in she still hasn't managed to ruin the OS.

Agreed, but I hope the Chromebook has a way to permanently disable installing extensions.

Avoiding scammers likely requires restricting access to their finances as well, which could involve getting a power of attorney.

Both Android and iOS, but especially iOS, have made large accessibility regressions by switching to a frequently gesture based interface where all sorts of quite similar swipes do different things changing the screen context and revealing hidden modes. For use by people with e.g. Parkinson's disease this is catastrophic. Voice commands can somewhat compensate, but I think we're all familiar with the many ways in which voice commands can fail to perform even simple requests, and also how sensitive the voice assistants are to changes in both speed and volume of received speech. While iOS does have some good accessibility settings, they are not comprehensive, and overall usability has in some big ways declined substantially, even while more and more tasks have to be done online.

I purchased a paper user manual “for the elderly” for iOS/phone/ipad. They update it every so often and the text is large. They got a few years of use.

Now down to a home phone and an iPad with Facebook.

Thanks - my wife and I have recently got her mother (who is in her 90's) to try using an iPhone. It never occurred to me to get a printed manual - I think that might really help her.

Yeah, I have to echo this. I moved all the relatives who would listen to MacBook Air + iPhone, and I have just one relative who is holding out on a cheap Lenovo laptop - it's as much work to keep them running as all the others combined.

Yes, going the Apple route is more expensive. But unless you have a lot of time on your hands to deal with teaching weird Windows and Android edge-cases over and over again... well worth the investment. And even elderly Apple gear will generally serve your relatives well.

I hate it, but Apple is really is the best choice here. Their devices and software pass the grandmother test better than anything else. The UX is unmatched. I dream of the day my grandmother can use GNU/Linux for the privacy, freedom, and frugality, but I'm not sure that day will ever come.

This. The moment I switched my mom to Mac OS and iPhone, literally all issues she had with computer disappeared. She still needed me to help with Photoshop install and backups, but besides that - no problem for the last 7 years. And running on the same machine at that with no problems.

Having worked for a large app development consultancy that did parity between Apple and Android apps, the Apple vetting progress was rigorous and would often reject apps based on UX. While a pain, the result compares in comparison to what is on the Android App Store.

I did use to own an Android and switched to an Apple. I found that Apple products are more intuitive in their UX and setup (or really anything that was complicated to do on Android) just worked on Apple.

Just make sure someone else is set as a recovery contact for the Apple ID, and also knows their Apple ID password and device screenlock code. One day you’ll need it. :/

My dad's 82 has an IPP 12.9, iPhone 12 Pro Max, and a Macbook Air. Over time, the MBA usage has dropped off, and is mainly used for financial sites that don't play well with Safari/iPadOS.

The only real issue he has is printing. His MBA is basically an AirPrint bridge at this point. One day we'll get him an AirPrint compatible printer.

You can set up raspberry pi to act as bridge or even setup email printing/etc.

Doesn't solve them putting the phone in airplane mode or getting the camera coated in an opaque film, though. Also, every elderly family member with an iPhone has forgotten the iCloud password and asked me why they cannot install apps. But it's still better than the alternatives.

Another advantage of Apple devices is consistancy of UI from device to device (all iPhones work the same), and from form factor to form factor (iPhones to iPads and even to workstations, to a degree). When they get a new phone, it works like their prior one.

Tech stupid enough for toddlers, geriatrics, and even parrots[0]. That's what they want us all to be.

0: https://youtu.be/cZSNhJcKFf4

Tech accessible to everyone, yes.

Came here to say this.

Mother in law had a PC and a whole bunch of old Android tablets. I'd get a phone call about once a week asking some kind of support question.

When everything melted down and the PC got too old I got her to buy an iPad. Haven't heard a squeak since - she loves it, it does everything she wants and she's now totally self-sufficient.

Anecdotal outcome of US marketing. Our older relatives are all on PC and Android (one of them 95) and can attest to the same.

Careful to what money sink you throw your elderly into.

I would downvote but the option has been removed. The OP doesn't mention brand. Their parents may already have iPhone. The only phone issue mentioned is airplane mode, so it wouldn't make a difference.

Android phones have an "Easy Mode" which improves usability for seniors and anyone who prefers bigger buttons and simpler controls. I would expect enabling this may help.

Thank god the EU stepped in and fixed this for us all!

The app-switcher in newer IpadOS is an endless confusion to my mother. Somehow she opens multiple copies of web-browser, email, etc, and then cant find anything.

How much I hope I could disable that one feature!

Hiding the Inbox folder in Email is another classic I need to fix monthly.

It might help to disable "Allow Multiple Apps" and "Picture in Picture" on her iPad. This also disables slide over. Also consider disabling gestures.

iOS 17 offers to disable all of this stuff on initial install if you set up a child account, because kids tend to get confused, especially by slide over. But they should probably offer that sort of thing as an "easy mode" option for all users.

I found the issues went down a lot when I moved everyone to macOS. The OS itself is sandboxed, so a user can’t really destroy it. My mom downloaded some “screensavers” that were actually viruses, and since they were .exe files, they didn’t run or do anything.

I think the only thing better would be some kind of immutable OS, where each reboot restores it to its original state. I haven’t set up anything like this on hardware, but I’ve seen it as a VM offering.

Of course, if they are already used to some other system, like Windows, changing is probably more trouble than it’s worth. You could just really lock it down, so they only have access to certain applications and their home folder.

For the phone, if on iOS, Apple introduced Assistive Access not too long ago to dumb down the phone for people who might need it. You can control which apps they get, and present a simplified version of the apps.

https://support.apple.com/guide/assistive-access-iphone/set-...

> Of course, if they are already used to some other system, like Windows, changing is probably more trouble than it’s worth.

I thought that, too, but I installed Xubuntu on my parents PC, told them it works like Windows (like double click desktop icons to open programs, the X button in the corner closes them), showed them how to check email, watch Youtube, play solitaire, and shut down. I expected them to say "put it back like what it was", but after about 10 years, it never happened. I eventually showed them how to keep it up to date, but no big security issues ever happened like on Windows.

I too did this for my family, but with Ubuntu many years ago. I expected it to be a rather rough switch from Windows, but everyone migrated without a hitch. And the number of support calls went to basically zero.

I did the same with a similar outcome.

Turns out they stopped using the computer.

Linux is great for power users and the absolute lightest users, with nothing but punishment in the middle.

Did this, but with Linux Mint, and had the same experience. If one only needs a browser and word processor, many Linux distros seem perfect.

+1. My dad even figured out how to use LibreOffice, which was awesome

We here on HN may have our doubts about Linux on the desktop, but for basic usage (= mostly using just the browser) it's more than good enough. And the main advantage (same as with MacOS) is that it's not Windows - which isn't necessarily going against Microsoft (although they are doing their part too with botched Windows updates), the biggest problem with Windows is that most malware is still targeting it.

>the biggest problem with Windows is that most malware is still targeting it.

And even so, when's the last time Windows had a serious security issue? I've been out of the Windows loop for a while, but it seems the biggest vulnerabilities of the past few years are OS agnostic.

Great example. Similar design patterns result in similar user experiences irrespective of platform. Who would have thunk?

My father has completely destroyed two M1 iMac installs so far. YMMV.

He watches YT videos all day and is paranoid about everything. End game was he managed to install two different VPN packages on one install and managed to install a system cleaner on another and spend about £500 in total and end up with two non working systems and higher blood pressure.

I think at this point he needs an iPad in a rugged case with screen time turned on and all his credit cards taking away. Possibly locking his hands in a box somewhere where they can't curse anything as well.

He needs an adblocker! Most YT adverts are designed to open the wallets of unsophisticated people, often giving them nothing good in return.

Don't give people admin rights, that's madness!

This is a good suggestion. I don't know why but my mother is intent on destroying her laptop by visiting a lot of religious sites. They all seem to be infected with all kinds of malicious advertisements and bogus download buttons.

For the phone, she has an Android but I'm moving her to an iPhone at the first opportunity I get. I tried to talk her into a Macbook Air when she replaced the last laptop but since I wasn't there at the time they foisted another Windows machine on her.

Another source of problems is the endless email chains that her generation seem to love, they will forward all kinds of content that is all "hey this is funny watch this" sort of stuff, but turns out to be malicious in some way i.e. download this thing to watch the video, where the thing is some kind of hideous malware.

(please note: this is not an anti-religious post, but the malware makers seem to target those sites much more than anything else I have seen.)

> (please note: this is not an anti-religious post, but the malware makers seem to target those sites much more than anything else I have seen.)

I would guess it is because older people are more likely to visit, so setting up such a site or just buying ad space on it is a good way to target an older (and less tech-savvy) audience.

> They all seem to be infected with all kinds of malicious advertisements and bogus download buttons.

If ads are a problem there is pretty good solution: Firefox + uBlock Origin and perhaps some other extensions. Apple doesn't allow Firefox on iOS which is why I would never recommend it.

The thing I have a continual problem with is "accidental" rearranging of the home screen. "My xyz application has gone" is a continual complaint. (It's been dragged to another screen.) Accidental is in quotes because the young grandkids delight it rearranging it once they discover how.

There is no solution on iOS. Android can potentially solve this because you can replace the launcher. But only potentially, because I've yet to find a good "elderly friendly" launcher. Actually, it's not just "elderly only" as if I found one that allowed you to lock the launcher layout somehow, I'd use it. "Pocket rearrangement" of my home screen is far too common.

In general "aggressive simplification" of the UI is the key here. Provide just the things they use, and remove things they don't like "don't disturb". In the hands of an elderly person a "don't disturb" button hidden in the notification area becomes a "break my phone" button. Android does in principle all you to remove all of those. iOS doesn't.

The biggest problem I have had since I switched my parents to Mac is just my brother in-law who lives with them and regularly loudly proclaim about Macs being a waste of money. He’s installed “virus scanners” multiple times that were themselves if not viruses, at the very least adware. He’s also attempted to defrag my moms ssd-having Mac Mini with some sort of software that claims to do so.

They don’t have admin rights anymore most because of this. For some reason though their printer driver regularly pops a notification asking for admin privileges.

> For some reason though their printer driver regularly pops a notification asking for admin privileges.

Printers are garbage, printer drivers are dumpster fires, and the people responsible for both are sociopaths.

For whatever it's worth giving people a desktop or laptop computer that is a bare bones linux install and desktop environment will also prevent old people from screwing up a computer. Literally 99% of what they are ever going to do is inside a browser, and will function just fine inside of Firefox and/or Chromium as their user interface to the computer.

It's highly unlikely that an older person is going to successfully find, download and install a malicious .deb file, or follow the instructions to "copy this to clipboard and paste it with sudo" into their shell to compromise a linux machine.

Agreed: my father-in-law was continuously trashing his Windows install. Many years ago, I put him on Linux Mint + MATE where he only uses Firefox and a bit of LibreOffice -- he's been fine with this setup -- his only remaining issues (for the most part) are when his Yahoo Email interface changes, etc. And, he has not managed to trash it yet! ;)

My mother once somehow trashed her MacOS X install so bad it was stopping at a gray frowny-faced Mac logo screen and going no further. Because I had helped her set up SSH service on it a while prior, I was able to easily remote in from my Linux desktop and actually fix the thing and reboot it for her from hundreds of miles away. Macs make great machines for tech-terrified parental units, even when they break down. :)

> I think the only thing better would be some kind of immutable OS, where each reboot restores it to its original state. I haven’t set up anything like this on hardware, but I’ve seen it as a VM offering.

Doesn’t ChromeOS do something like this?

You would think that macos didn't have problems, but I recently cleaned up someone's mac after I noticed a LOT of redirects when loading a website in safari.

Lots of weird directories with almost the right name, launch daemons, things that would re-install themselves when removed, etc.

the situation was basically nuke from orbit and start over.

this was a few os's back on intel. Maybe it's better now?

I can’t remember exactly when macOS made the change. It was a few years back.

>The system domain contains the system software installed by Apple. The resources in the system domain are required by the system to run. Users cannot add, remove, or alter items in this domain.

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Fi...

I’m sure it’s still possible to junk a system up, but a user shouldn’t be able to screw up the actual system files.

/Library is probably the biggest wildcard, as it impacts all users on the system, otherwise, creating a new user account should clean up pretty much everything, without having to reinstall the OS itself. I assume making a normal user account for the persons could allow the admin the ability to prevent the user from adding things to /Applications and /Library. The user would still be able to install apps using a ~/Applications folder and have settings in ~/Library. ~/Library is typically used automatically, while ~/Applications is something that needs to be created, but works just fine. I use this at work to install some things I would otherwise not be able to install.

Same thing happened to me with Mac Keeper malware. Some bogus software I downloaded automatically checked a download Mac Keeper checkbox and it was down the rabbit hole for a few days.

I think I ended up doing a clean install on a days old back up to rid my self of it. It was years ago on an Intel Mac.

You might want to set up NixOS with impermanence, with something like https://github.com/nix-community/impermanence. Install an easy to use desktop environment like ElementaryOS, and configure NixOS with or without Flatpak, if you want to give the user the ability to install new software or not. Then set up automatic updates, automatic garbage collection and you have a truly stable system.

Stateless Windows: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40127728

>Stateless Windows

Good suggestion.

This is the Universal Write Filter (UWF) which descended from the earlier Enhanced Write Filter (EWF) in Windows Embedded.

Basically Windows runs like normal (i.e. from your Windows folder on the drive it is installed on), but any time there would normally be a need to write to the drive (for updating settings, files or whatever) the writes are directed to the RAM instead, so writes can be discarded as desired upon reboot for Windows to return to the reference state.

The UWF can be combined with Windows Kiosk Mode and it can be a foundation for a pretty well-mangaged stand-alone (or networked) desktop.

Alternatively, with a Linux Live desktop like you get when booted to a Linux Live "install" USB stick (without Linux actually being installed on HDD or SSD), the OS and entire file system itself runs from memory, and any updates or apps you install are also in memory only unless you enable "persistence", otherwise there are no routine writes to the USB drive and it reboots to the same reference defaults every time.

> I think the only thing better would be some kind of immutable OS, where each reboot restores it to its original state

I looked into a few of these, but none of their OS update stories were good, it's confusing if anyone random helps out, and saving photos across reboots is fragile.

I found a Chromebook, well “chrome top” desktop did this well enough. It’s not technically immutable but it’s hard enough to install and break things that it worked well with my grandmother.

> I think the only thing better would be some kind of immutable OS

Simple, just set them up with NixOS ;)

The thing I love about my parents getting Apple products is that they can just go to the Apple Store and have someone help them. An app wasn't launching on their phone, they went to the Apple Store, the person figured out that they hadn't updated their apps in a long time, did that, made sure it worked, and turned on auto-updates (after asking if that would be good for them). Perfect, I didn't even know they had a problem until I heard the story about it being fixed.

I've had relatives go to other tech support places and usually it means they pay money for someone to upsell them on something else or tell them they need a new machine. Apple is fine supporting my parents who don't want a new iPhone. Yea, eventually it's out of support, but it's a long enough time.

I also love that the Apple ecosystem tends towards "you should be willing to pay money for something" rather than "let's see how we can scam money out of someone unwilling to part with their money." If you're techie, you know the difference between real stuff and fake stuff. When non-techies get a pop-up on their Windows laptop telling them that their anti-virus subscription is running out (that came pre-installed) and that they'll be vulnerable to all sorts of bad things if they don't pay $50, they get nervous and call me. Then I have to figure out (over the phone) how to uninstall the crap and get Microsoft Defender working.

Even Windows 11 is just becoming a pile of ads and other junk.

With streaming TV boxes, Roku ends up installing apps they don't know how to uninstall because if you press the play button while the TV is off, it installs whatever app they're promoting on the screen saver. Fire TV and Android TV are a mess of ads and it's hard to know what content you have access to and what you don't. I'm just so sick of relatives asking me "How did this app get on my Roku? How do I get it off?" and things like "How do I only see the shows I have access to? Why is it showing me Showtime when it tells me I have to pay when I click on it? I think dad might have subscribed to things because he didn't know what he was doing. How do I cancel that? No I don't know what he might have subscribed to."

Sure, you can say that Apple TV comes with the Apple TV app pre-installed, but it isn't constantly pushing things on you. Sure, Apple would like an iCloud subscription, but if my parents end up giving Apple $1/mo, I'm fine with that. The level of difference is simply astonishing. It's like having a store email you once "hey, we have new pants" compared to the stores that email you twice a day "HEY!!!! HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT NEW PANTS!!!!" You can say "they're both doing it", but there's a huge difference.

Apple isn't perfect, but I feel comfortable with non-techie people in my life having Apple products. They can get support when they need it at the Apple Store, Apple is happy with the money they've paid for the product, and I can put their technical needs out of my mind. They love it too. They get unlimited free access to helpful employees who fix their stuff faster than I can get to it. Yea, if you're techie you know how things work and what to look for and you can make decisions for yourself. When relatives buy non-Apple stuff, they're making a decision that I'm going to fix things for them.

If you don't want to change OS. Simply creating a non-admin account and installing ad-blockers will go a long way. Tell them most software on Internet have virus so install is blocked. Also enable remote desktop on all.

Edit: For some issues like airplane mode, see if you can remove them from quick access.

Strange that I had to scroll down this far for this answer. Creating a normal, non-admin user for them will greatly limit the damage they can do as they won't be able to make system-wide changes. I also disabled installing extensions in Edge.

I would never recommend something like iPad. I feel psychologically it makes you a passive consumer, while something like Mac/Win is more action oriented.

Is that a problem for the elderly?

do your parents write a lot of code?

> Simply creating a non-admin account

tried that on my father's computer, and he decided it was "broken", so took it into a shop to get re-installed...

I’ve reduced 99% of tech calls from elderly family(60s-80s) by moving them to either ChromeOS/Android or MacOS/IOS and all printers to Brother lasers. If they spend money on phones I lean toward Apple ecosystem. If they penny pinch - Google is king with all second hand Samsung galaxy/books, Dell enterprise chromebooks, or chromeboxes - making sure to verify years of support. It also makes it significantly easier to not mix ecosystems. I then set updates to automatic and make ublockorigin default in the browser. The last 7 years nearly every issue was resolved with a restart.

How fucking great are Brother laser printers? The UX is shit, but you very rarely have to interact with it because they just fucking do their job.

Mine was in the closet for a couple years once and I took it out, plugged it in, and just printed what I want through WiFi.

I remember dealing with HP drivers on Windows back in the day…

Yes. Installed a Brother printer myself the other day, was expecting a half-day affair, but it all just worked in 5 minutes.

Contrast this with an HP printer I bought. I had to:

- manually install sketchy HP software on my mac

- use that sketchy software, through a USB cable to update the firmware on the HP printer

- somehow figure out how to get the HP printer to connect to Wifi

- get it working, and never touch it again

The popular "just buy this printer" Verge article recommends the Brother HL-L2305W. But Brother appears to have gone the subscription route and replaced that model with the HL-L2405W, which is "Amazon Dash Replenishment Ready" and whose product description says "Requires enrollment in a monthly billed Brother Refresh EZ Print Subscription service plan based on monthly printed page allotments."

The older model is no longer available new from Amazon.

Is Brother still a good recommendation? This subscription pivot gives the company all the wrong incentives.

Just ditched my HP for a Brother a couple months back, after having continual issues with individual colors running out and eventually it refused to recognize a single color cartridge slot, I never used color anyway. So went to a Brother monochrome. Been smooth since.

another vouch for brother printers. not optimum but i just plopped one connected to wifi only and it can print with minimal config and also scanning through mac's image capture app.

Relevant link:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24117976/best-printer-2024...

"After a full year of not thinking about printers, the best printer is still whatever random Brother laser printer that’s on sale."

They are the only printers the Just Fucking Work™.

Kinda sad, in a way.

Your comment makes me forget that sometimes it's an inside job.

Yes, sometimes it's not sketchysite.com or the "make money fast" email, it is the printer manufacturer that's installing the garbage.

We switched my grandmother-in-law over to Linux last year and the amount of support calls I've had to do has dropped to 0. All she does is use chrome to check her email, and occasionally edit a document. A majority of the time she phoned for me to come 'fix her computer' it was just a Windows update that had reset some setting, or was trying to get her to sign up for a Microsoft account before she could log in, or some other obnoxious crap that made her think that her computer was broken.

We put her on Debian with Cinnamon as the DE, and downloaded a Windows 10 theme. We even put the Windows 10 logo as the start button. For her, she has 0 idea that she's even using Linux except for the fact that her computer doesn't randomly "break" anymore. All this with the added benefit that I can do remote support far more easily now.

The other huge benefit is when other relatives come over and start poking and prodding, it's far harder for them to do any damage. A few times I needed to 'fix' things was because her 60 year-old son (who knows nothing about computers, but is a medical doctor so he must know what he's doing) would come over and install a bunch of scammy antivirus software, change a bunch of settings, then leave proclaiming that the problem was "fixed". Switching to Linux has helped at keeping his fingers out of the pot immensely.

I went all out for my gramp's PC:

- Linux Debian with default user privileges

- XFCE kiosk mode with everything as shortcut icons (that can't be deleted) + removed all UI access to everything else

- Monthly Borg save of the /home dir

- X2Go for screen sharing when assistance required

So that's the great thing with Linux: you can make it look exactly how you want (huge icons, etc.), and you basically just save the /home dir to save the "state" for the user. Downside is that config is a lot of work.

>Downside is that config is a lot of work.

Consider sharing the work as open source. I think that too often people think of "mere configs" as something less than programming, not valuable and not worth sharing, when they are in fact really valuable. Not just the configs, but the curation, too.

If such a project caught on, I bet others would pitch in to smooth down the rough edges. In fact, it might be nice to merge and/or utilize a recovery distribution to restore such a configuration in the event of an issue.

Had to scroll far too long for this.

In one relative's case with an old laptop, I installed some light distro, Firefox with an ad-block and it's been stable for a few years. She only browses a few favorite sites.

Other's infatuation with Apple's overpriced *nix boxes is a true testament to Apple's marketing department. Pay more for less. We can't spend so many thousands every few years.

I set up Linux desktops for elderly relatives who wanted tech support, to universal satisfaction. They seem to not have many issues, since I get fewer than 5 support calls a year total, and I'm an experienced Linux user so fixing anything that does come up is usually easy (<1 of those is actually OS related, they're mostly questions like "how do I do X in LibreOffice again?" or "I got this scam email...").

It's also nice that the DEs I chose are relatively stable, not forcing them to keep up with changes. Running well on old and cheap hardware is also a plus, I couldn't convince anyone to buy a new or even used iMac (and wouldn't want to do that anyway, macOS is far from bug free...).

That said, none of them have self-destructive tendencies and I don't expect to just give them a device and have them set it up themselves.

I have had a great time using Fedora for family members for years! Fedora on a Lenovo laptop has made my OS-related support calls plummet to zero, basically. I check their laptop once or twice a year (during holidays) to upgrade to the latest release.

I spent a few hours setting up Firefox with an uBlock and set up an email client, and that was it.

There was an awkward period where Wayland made screen sharing difficult, but switching to X made TeamViewer work again. From Fedora 39, I switched to using the built-in remote desktop function (RDP) + an always-on Wireguard connection, which makes screen sharing so smooth when I occasionally need to help with non-OS related challenges. This can also be used for SSH access, or whatever.

I recently went with Fedora Silverblue for another relative, which makes everything stay up to date without them noticing. So far it has worked fine, but installing the printer driver was a bit different than usual – but not a problem.

EDIT: Prior experiences has been primarily with macOS, and it has been a lot of trouble adjusting it to their needs and preferences.

I second the Silverblue suggestion. With its image-based updates and read-only rootfs, it's the Linux distro most akin to ChromeOS.

I second the Linux recommendation. KDE has a desktop lockdown mode, and if that is not enough there is also a kiosk mode. It's better than foolproof - it is absolutely designed to enable secure, limited access to specific applications.

Same for my mother using ubuntu. She do not know her password (the login is automatic). In case of problem, I connect using ssh.

Most of admin tasks are apt-get update/upgrade, rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty Bureau/* (because she creates empty directory on desktop). The command cupsenable DeskJet-3630-series allows to unstuck the printer without mouse access (I was on my phone with connectbot). I have changed the computer after 10 years. It was transparent for her.

ChromeOS is a good idea if all they do is surf; security risks are pretty low. iPhones are also fairly safe, but the older they get, the slower they'll get and the more you have to support them. I've had to explain to my dad that eventually the software on the phone will be so old that new apps can't go on it. He looks at me in confusion and aggression and asks why, as though I'm responsible for Apple's planned obsolescence.

My family was ultimately able to convince my grandmother to get rid of her computers altogether, when her dementia really kicked in. I think we were lucky as she never really got on with computers, and would tell anyone who'd listen how computers 'came in' to her office the year she retired (in the 90s) and so never needed to learn.

> I've had to explain to my dad that eventually the software on the phone will be so old that new apps can't go on it. He looks at me in confusion and aggression and asks why

I’m with dad on this one! I have so much perfectly good hardware that becomes increasingly useless because Apple stopped providing updates, and 3rd party software developers insist that I’m running the absolute latest OS. I’m at that point yet again with an iPhone 7 that works flawlessly but when I go to get new apps, “SORRY LOSER. You need bleeding edge iOS for your bank’s stupid app!”

I’ll channel your dad’s aggression if I ever meet a Schwab software engineer in person. I complain to every Apple employee I know, too, but they all look at me like I’m crazy for not just buying a new phone every year.

Be thankful he even remembers the password needed to download apps, which for some reason is not simply the device's passcode.

You fail to understand how software development and maintenance works.

OFC you need an updated system that has all known security holes fixed to run homebanking apps.

Also, as a dev I would only support one config and not a myriad of different devices and operating system versions (APIs). Livelong. For 3$ purchase price. On all devices. For the whole family.

And imho Apple devices are supported much longer than most Android ones...

> You fail to understand how software development and maintenance works.

Someone complains about bad food at restaurant. Defender responds "you fail to understand how cooking works".

> You fail to understand how software development and maintenance works.

OK, dude. It's not like I've been in software for 25 years, 15 of them being on mobile, both on the OS side and on the third party app side. But, yea, I fail to understand.

On the 3p side, I've heard all the lame excuses, and they are almost all excuses rather than reasons. The big one is that supporting older versions blows up the test matrix (the number of device/OS/API level combinations that need to be validated). I can understand if you're a hobbyist, you might not be able to afford to buy the "myriad of different devices" and aren't staffed to test your app on each one. But if you are any kind of serious business, you signed up for this investment when you decided to write apps. Throwing a couple of older devices running older OSes onto that test plan should not blow your budget, and if it does, you probably shouldn't be writing that banking software to begin with. Also, almost all of your testing is automated, right? (Please say Yes). So it's not like you need to hire more human testers as your test matrix grows. If you are unable to support more than the bleeding edge OS, it makes me wonder what kind of fly-by-night developer shop you are.

The second excuse is about valuing developer convenience over users. "Oh, the new OSes contain cool new stuff that we want to take advantage of, and it's a total bummer to maintain the code paths that support 'legacy' devices." You already have the code that runs on the previous OS or API level, you're choosing to get rid of it, deliberately throwing users under the bus, so that you can clean code up or at least not have to maintain it. Bad tradeoff IMO.

There are a whole bunch of other little excuses for no longer targeting older systems, and most of them boil down to either cost, laziness, or a skill issue. None of them respect the end user.

I have a little more sympathy on the OS side. Sometimes a major step forward on the hardware (particularly the CPU architecture) might make it really tempting to cut off previous versions. I still think both major mobile OSes cut off old devices way too early. I have PCs from the early 2000s that can still run modern Linux distributions, so support for old hardware is usually technically possible, just inconvenient and costly. I'm not asking companies to support devices from 20 years ago, but they could.

Your "security holes" excuse is ridiculous: All major OS vendors already provide security updates to at least 5 previous major OS releases. There is no security reason for an app developer to support only the bleeding edge latest OS.

Yeah but a lot of apps will require the very latest iOS for no reason other than the dev happened to build it that way per Xcode defaults, and some apps will also require you to use the latest version of the app at all times.

I moved my MIL to the Apple ecosystem circa 2009-2010 and have mostly been satisfied.

She has a normal (not admin) user account on her Mac. She cannot install applications*. Her Documents folder is synced to iCloud. Everything is backed up with Time Machine, and for good measure I rsync her home directory to my own backup periodically. She uses a locked down Google Worksplace account (this cost more since we pay for one admin account and her restricted account). She can access everything from her iPhone and her iPads.

Surprises: some applications can be downloaded and will install themselves into ~/Applications, these usually are the thousand or so zoom/webex/webmeetinggo variants. Initially we did not lock down her Google Chrome and she kept installing "Extensions that will speed up your browser experience!" which of course were scams, so we locked her out of installing Chrome Extensions (this has made it difficult to legitimately install chrome extensions unfortunately). She has, through what I'm guessing were bad UI questions for someone now in her 80s, wiped out her Documents folder multiple times, syncing the deletions to her iCloud. Minimal actual loss since thanks to my paranoid backup strategies.

Hard: she's been using Macs on and off since the 1990s. Each new recent release of MacOS or iOS has become a bit of a nightmare. While I get the relentless need to upgrade and improve and sell more widgets I really wish there was an LTS strategy we could opt into that was just security or sev 1 style bug fixes.

Really hard: I fell into this because every time she went into an Apple Store or tech shop for support they 1) would ask her what her Apple ID was and then just go off and create another one for her anyway. I found six before I got her to understand it's just her email address. 2) Every tech guy has his own way of doing shit, myself included, and it's utterly baffling to someone who simultaneously has been using computers for decades and yet is very much non technical.

She's in her mid 80s now, I think we're on her last MacBook Air, which I just moved her to in the past year or so. The next upgrade, if necessary, is probably to a Chromebook.

> I really wish there was an LTS strategy

IMO, macOS is the only consumer LTS desktop around these days. Windows UX is going a million miles a minute with new Copilot junk every other day, intrusive widgets, and an exceedingly unpleasant browsing experience with shopping, coupons, MSN and more Copilot.

Edit: forgot ChromeOS. It’s a proper mainstream LTS desktop.

Made this same decision with my mom in her late 50's. She went back to work and uses Microsoft day to day at her job...but the Apple decision both for PC and for phone has been very beneficial. It was always more intuitive for her.

>I think we're on her last MacBook Air, ... The next upgrade, if necessary, is probably to a Chromebook.

Perhaps I'm stepping out of line by saying this, but: That Macbook Air isn't her last and the next upgrade will be necessary.

Yes, we all pass eventually, but death is horrible both for the individual and the loved ones, so it's worth "lalala"ing it away for trivial things like this and enjoying what time we have.

Anecdata: My mother passed five months ago. I was her tech support. I miss her, tech support and all.

Based on mutual family histories, there’s a very real chance she (85) will outlive me (56). The “if necessary” was more about whether this MBA is driven over by a taxi or if Apple updates cease for it.

My father continuously had problems sending pictures over SMS, which would be super helpful so that I could help him accomplish tasks remotely. The built-in app on Android was too confusing for him thanks to cognitive decline. I made a super simple app that's only purpose was to send pics via SMS. One screen, contacts selected by drop down, camera view in the center, one button. Google wouldn't let me publish it because SMS apps on the Play Store have to implement ALL SMS functionality. I sent him the APK by email so at least there's that. It worked well for him at least. Fuck Google though.

Would you be open to putting it on F-Droid or something like that?

After doing some Android freelance recently and having a clients Play Store account get shut down because they forgot one of the requirements imposed by Google I’m done with Android, and hopefully can free myself from Google services completely.

SMS or MMS? Or is that uploading the picture somewhere and SMSing a link to it?

Yes it’s MMS. Something I learned during the process of making it was that sending a pic wasn’t technically SMS… guess I forgot. Haven’t worked with SMS/MMS since.

Fuck Google for asking to always sign in to Google accounts for everything and tying up shit together.

And why are they bugging us for a sign in when in mobile private mode on safari! Gtfoh!

Can you link to source. I'm in the very same situation.

Sure, I made the repo public: https://github.com/gvbl/TextAPic

I don't believe the app works any more, something has changed and I haven't investigated. I hope it's still useful for you!

My father is 84. On average once a week he calls me in a state of confusion and despair that he can’t do something on the computer. 100% of the time it involves logging in to a website or paying for something. This is when I’m so happy he has a Mac - I open Messages, find the last message from him and click on the Share Screen icon. We then complete the activity together, as if I’m sitting next to him. I’m always surprised how few people know this is built into macOS.

This sounds so good. My father is using windows. He has teamviewer installed - and half the time when I wanna connect with him it turns into a nightmare of new version update. I only have most recent version. He doesn’t know, which version he has. I can’t connect to him, then I need to guide him how to update his version. It’d probably be easier for me to run older version in a VM, but then I don’t want him to run potentially insecure old version of screensharing app.

If you're both on Windows 10+ you can use Quick Assist which is built in and seems to work pretty well.

Almost this same exact thing happened with my parents last week. The only thing is that MacOS' remote desktop seems to work inconsistently. Sometimes it sends the permissions request immediately and sometimes it takes a while. Or the person on the other end says OK but the approval never goes through.

When it works it's fantastic though. Ditto for FaceTime screen sharing.

I find that doing a FaceTime audio call and having them answer on the device.. the requesting screen sharing makes it work every time.

If you do a FaceTime video call they can screen share from inside the call.. but it’s more steps for them.

I do this easily but with anydesk. It's always on on his Linux Mint laptop and I just start the session, he clicks accept on his popup and we're off.

I help so many friends AnyDesk has decided I'm a company so I can't use that any more. Now I use RustDesk.

I know nothing about the Apple world so take my question in that context. Is there something equivalent for iPads ?

If my wife could take control of her Father's iPad then both parties would be happier, as far as I have been able to discover this is something that isn't able to be done, by Apple software or third-party. If I found I out I was wrong that would be good.

You could start a FaceTime call, have him share his screen, and lead him through whatever he needs to do. You don't have direct control, but if he can follow directions, it'll work.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/109365

If your wife is in the Apple world this MacWorld article gives a good overview of the options.

https://www.macworld.com/article/672451/how-to-share-screens...

Well, AnyDesk allows screen sharing from i-Devices, not sure about remote control though.

I'm saddened by the responses here. It's not older users' fault. Design teams at leading tech companies have gotten a free pass for designing mcmansions in software without realizing that kids weren't the only generation being damaged when we designed this mess. My only hope now is that a Jonathan Haidt and Tristan Harris arise from the ashes to protect the elderly without blaming them for software design mistakes arising over the last 3 decades that could have been avoided. Finance paved the way for abuse of the elderly. Sadly, big tech has picked up that torch and run with it.

Agreed. It's also both amusing and saddening to see the iOS/Windows/Android fanboys duking it out.

Some good ideas in this thread, though. I'll curate a list of recommendations and provide it to him and hopefully he can undo some of the negative patterns their systems keep forcing on them.

Thanks for your reply.

I carry a Pixel in one pocket and an iPhone in the other while lamenting the two decades since the deprecation of my Sidekick. Much like the discussion about older users here, it's tragic that we can't learn anything outside Apple Park from the SE or the mini showing the path to light and fast form factors. I know I'm not alone there as all my friends made the same half-deprecated choices.

A decade later, it's hard to blame Samsung for the Galaxy Note being so successful, particularly for older users who don't have my Coke bottle bifocals now that the entire Android market followed suit, even if they were a little late to the party.

Aside from the many excellent suggestions about how to mange the devices themselves, I'd highly recommend putting a pihole on the whole wifi network.

I added a pihole to my home network via a <$100 NUC (very much overkill for this purpose), and the rate of my relatives falling for weird viruses and scams has gone way down.

I think this will not go down well here on HackerNews because I'm going to suggest sticking up to Apple. Here is my experience. I tried with cheaper phones that we can just replace when they lose, drop it, or many other reasons.

Get them on iPhones, Macs, Apple TV, and iPads. They can be used ones or hand-me-downs, but that ecosystem works for them. Here is a setup for the in-laws.

An Apple TV drives as the "Apple Home" Setup while an iPad (the backup) is mounted near the TV. That room/area is the "talking to the kids area" where they just know how to respond or start a video call. The only other button they learned was to switch between their favorite local cable provider and the Apple TV. It did take a lot of repeated practice from "I can see on the iPad but not TV" to "seeing and talking on the big TV".

iPhones/Macs (instead of selling yours, give them your old one) are the easiest to set up and maintain. The contacts sync, and they have stopped complaining about getting back their phone contacts. The father-in-law once hand-wrote about a 5-paged A4 with about 200+ odd numbers and came to me to sync to the new phone. They are not losing their photos anymore and can spend hours browsing photos of their gigantic family members.

Tip: Set up your Apple TV screensaver with a specific Album and keep sharing photos there. Now, watch the grandparents, grand-everyone just sit in front of the screensaver and spend hours talking, laughing, arguing, crying, and sleeping off.

My issue is that I don't know how to avoid the apple password never getting in the way (fail them cause account lockdown). Is it possible to totally restrict access to settings/password entering in iPad?

LOL! So, this used to happen a lot when the kids wanted to play with the grandparents phones. So, I explain nicely to everyone that the devices are out of bounds for everyone and no-one touches the devices any more. That solves that. However, on rare occasions, there are needs to enter the Apple password -- my wife have a few other cousins who helps out. For parents with no access to external help, I suggest printing out on a paper and keeping it safe (use a font-size large of a serif fonts). If your local language is not English, complex password but based off the local language are easier -- (in locale) my dear friend's NAME that died during WWII on this DATE, etc. ;-)

Update: For cultural context and to avoid confusion with others around the world who have separate living spaces, my in-laws lives in a pretty large sprawl of almost a colony on their own with their brothers, sisters, cousins, and the entire families. On Google Maps, I had actually named the central home of that locality (my in-laws) to a specific name based on their family name -- making it easy for deliveries by post (Amazon, Post Office, Air Cargo deliveries, etc). In that part of the world, addresses are not precise and still goes on word of mouth.

Yes, you can disable Passcode in Apple Configurator, which uses a Mac to create the XML policy profile.

There's also an OSS project for iOS/macOS configuration profiles.

https://github.com/ProfileCreator/ProfileCreator/wiki

https://github.com/ProfileCreator/ProfileCreator

https://github.com/ProfileCreator/ProfileManifests

I started using computers in the 90s, my parents about 5 years later than me. I built a computer for my dad, at the time it ran Windows 2000, and I was already looking at Linux.

I couldn't switch my dad to Linux because his favourite game (DX-Ball) didn't run and he didn't like lbreakout2 or the other alternative, so I made a DX-Ball clone, when that was done, I switched his PC to Linux.

Having Linux on my parents computers made my life so much easier, I have automated backup running when they log in, the desktop only have relevant icons and they don't know their passwords so they can't sudo or do anything by mistake.

If a file is deleted by accident, there's 2 months of zfs snapshots to go through (I do that if they ask).

Phone, well, my mom has an android phone, no credit card attached, and I keep her google account password for her so she's not able to do anything too bad by accident.

>I couldn't switch my dad to Linux because his favourite game (DX-Ball) didn't run and he didn't like lbreakout2 or the other alternative, so I made a DX-Ball clone, when that was done, I switched his PC to Linux.

That's awesome!

Yeah, that’s my favourite part as well! So inspiring and cool! Yet, actually, could be not a super difficult thing to do (if you’re able to do that), and worth investing your time into.

Sounds like those parents would benefit from having a Chromebook?

If they want to play games then SteamDeck or such

Otherwise for phones, I just give my mum same/similar device to one I'm using (e.g. Motorola Moto G[number]). There's ~1800km in between us, so by using same or very similar device - I can hand hold her step by step.

And actually phone is usually not a problem - it's the TV. In order to have good Internet we've switched her from cable (coax so TV tuner was same as last few decades) to fiber. With fiber, now TV is basically IPTV/SmartTV - and she just wants to turn it on and use +/- and digits for channels and volume.

Chromebooks even have Steam nowadays. Oh and Android apps and games of course.

I bought them Chrome OS devices and I haven't had to do any tech support since. Phone wise, I have them on Android and I haven't had many problems, but I should have moved them to iOS when they were younger, as I find iOS UI is more stable across upgrades, which tend to leave the phone more or less behave how they used to and new behaviours are usually behind new settings/buttons. And elders who are not used to technology usually struggle whenever there are any UI changes.

Not only older people. Already since the beginning of computers there have been changes just for changes sake in everything. My theory at that time was that the changes were done so they could sell new education courses for companies every time they upgraded the software.

Now sometimes I have to google how to do things that should be very simple even in Windows or Android but now the setting is hidden to not confuse people...

This is the kind of stuff I do for my parents (early 70s):

- They both have the same phone: iPhone 13, so we all have a shared context for how phones work.

- Maintain Google Family/iCloud family subscriptions so they don't worry about storage or losing data. I do yearly in-person hard backups of their computers and phones (mostly photos).

- Create them synthetic iCloud accounts with email addresses that are just aliases for my email.

- Password managers + adblocking on everything. They don't know how to create passwords really but at least it autofills easily.

- They use Eero router and I am the admin - so I can remotely check network status, restart it, etc (this is REALLY nifty - "internet is messed up" questions dropped 100% when I switched this over from a NetGear router).

- Similarly, I set their router to NextDNS and block ads + threats for them.

I couldn’t quickly find what ‘synthetic iCloud account’ is, what do you mean by that? From the context it’s not very clear the difference with the regular iCloud account.

Sorry, using the word synthetic made it sound more technical than it really is. It's a regular iCloud account. I just said "synthetic" to get across the point that the account is basically meaningless to them, they don't even know they have it, and it's confusing to even bring it up with them. The fact that the username is an email address, but it's not actually how they access that email, would lead to questions/issues for me personally. So I just set up single-purpose aliases in fastmail and own the accounts fully.

in my experience:

1. linuxmint for PCs / laptops => either the cinnamon or mate edition <== for older hardware!!

and yes: semi-cheap brother or kyocera laserprinter - they also work like a charme with linux-based desktops ... but avoid the cheapest ones which sometimes need the windows-software for printing :)

2. either android phones or simple feature-phones with big buttons targeted at sight-impared / elderly people.

if you buy them new, avoid the ones which do not support LTE/4G ... depending on which country you are in: here in central/west europe they start to switch off UMTS/3G soon, so the old ones will fall back to GSM/2G.

if they don't need a computer:

3. android tablet for media consumption ... with at least a 10 inches screen, because of sight imparement!

nearly forgot that ... :)

just my 0.02€

Not exactly the answer to OP, but when we had to decide what device to buy for my mom, we bought her an iPad. Best choice ever. Zero maintenance, it's fast, she can do whatever she needs and wants and it's light and easy to move. Drop some water on it? It's fine. Not even the cat can destroy it.

>Drop some water on it? It's fine.

Careful. I did this to my Magic Keyboard recently. $350 later..

Yeah the point is with an iPad you don't have a keyboard to ruin with dust, dirt and liquids. Sure you can't literally dunk it into a pool, but the lifetime is extended compared to a laptop, if you are a person who's not good at taking care of your device.

You can also put iPads in MDM software and manage them remotely very easily.

Where can I learn more about this?

My mother died a few years back, but my choice of OS was driven by finding someone who could give her local support. Telephone support just wasn't possible, because she was completely tech-illiterate and would get into some really strange situations, and get really impatient when I couldn't wave a magic wand through the phone connection.

There was a retired gentleman in her area who made a hobby of helping other elderly folk. He used Apple, so she used Apple. If he'd used Windows, or Linux, or whatever - then that's what she would have used.

> There was a retired gentleman in her area who made a hobby of helping other elderly folk.

Kudos to that guy.

My mom is pretty good at figuring things out, she would sometimes ask me to help and if I couldn't figure it out (mostly because I've been using linux since the Windows ME shitshow) she would poke at it until it was fixed. She also has a couple embroidering machines and a crazy robo-sewing machine she likes to use so is motivated to do stuff on her own.

My step-dad... he took a windows class through his work before he retired in the 90's and likes to break thing in fun and exciting ways, almost always wifi for some reason. Then my mom will look at it until he pisses her off and he has to go without a laptop until either myself or my bro-in-law visits and he 'allows' us to fix it. It would be tragic if my mom didn't find it amusing TBH.

Now they have some sort of tech support that remotes into the machines when my step dad gets to fiddling. I made sure it wasn't one of those scams and they seem to be happy bickering about who does the grocery shopping instead of PCs so all's well in the household.

If the cognitive load of migrating away from Windows is too much, ManageEngine is free for your use-case (for forcing updates/policies, monitoring, and managing access). I'd look at using Assigned Access too (previously known as Kiosk Mode) for locking down their environment to things like browsing the internet.. And nothing else: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/assi...

However, locked down Chromebooks and Android profiles are generally the best way to go. Not sure about the Apple ecosystem (even though that's what I'd choose - just haven't found readily available advice).

My mother needed a laptop for managing the finances of some little club

So she asked me what to get within a limited budget - a windows laptop. I set it up with firefox, ublock origin etc. removed all the bloat.

and for helping her with whatever, on the computer, i installed Rustdesk. It has a super simple ui so you can get the password over the phone - then i can login and manage her computer from my own computer. (Rustdesk is free and opensource remote desktop and file sharing program)

as for phone.. my mother uses a samsung smartphone. Its what she's used to. So i have also installed Firefox on there, with ublock origin and ... thats really all i needed to do. She can login to her email or whatever other apps she uses, by herself.

My mother is 71. Not a complete tech idiot but also not really experienced with anything other than regular office-use (email, notes, managing a calendar)

i chose android for her phone because i know it better - and ads... oh god i hate ads. Thank god for firefox and ublock origin.

as for my grandmother who's over 100 years old... she has a landline. And thats it.

You don't need Intune, that's a fancy cloud thing to manage lots of machines. You can manage permissions on a local machine using Local Users and Groups (lusrmgr). Also get either uBlock Origin or Brave Browser with shields.

Chromeos flex could be worth looking at, and depending on the build of their old machine, they may not need to buy a new computer at all. CPU, RAM, and SSD upgrades could help if it's 15+ years old though.

I recently did this to my family's old 20" 2007 iMac and it's perfectly adequate for light web browsing, email, and youtube. Not too shabby for a 17 year old computer.

The best part is that it's secure and easy to use for those less tech literate.

Yeah, that’s for me. And also, FYI you can unlock chromeOS with a Bluetooth device (e.g. a smartwatch, if they have one), so it’s easier to unblock. I haven’t found any decent alternative to entering a complicated Google account password.

One thing I didn't see mentioned, assuming you're all on Apple devices: Add your parents as "children" to your iCloud account. That'll let you restrict access to things and reset their password if necessary.

Well, that’s a beautiful irony of life.

I refuse to do tech support for relatives. It's like getting into any other kind of business with them: a bad idea.

If they want a computer, they deal with the fallout when they screw it up.

The most I'll do if they ask about technology is is ask "what do you want to do with it" and the answer will almost certainly be iPad or Chromebook.

ChromeBooks are great for this since all they really need is a web browser.

Just for fun I installed ChromeOS Flex on an old Lenovo laptop. Installation was a breeze, and ChromeOS seems quite snappy. The number of possible settings are pretty minimal -- connecting to your local WiFi and logging into your Google account may be the only setup needed.

Also, ChromeOS doesn't come pre-loaded with tons of obnoxious crap-ware.

Accessibility features are really bad though. Given their market is old people and kids, I was shocked at how bad it was when I tried to help my dad set his up to work better for him. I’d just assumed they’d at least be close to Apple operating systems.

First time I hear of this issue. Which aspects are bad?

I got sick of repairing and rebuilding my in-laws windows PC about 7 years ago and moved them over to the largest ipads that were available at the time. It was 100% the right move. I haven't had to fix their computer in the past 7 years. Bought refurbs to keep the price down but it was still a couple grand total for two units. I got the cell enabled ones too so they work when they travel. Totally worth it.

A couple years ago I finally got them to switch from their pre-paid flip phone to an iphone. That's also gone extremely well. They own a Thor RV which (no surprise) has a terrible OEM stereo. Replaced that with a carplay capable one with a giant (but pretty low res) screen and that's made their RV travel GPS integration far less buggy than when using plain old bluetooth.

TBH moving them to iOS from windows was far less of a painful process than I expected and I'm pretty apple positive. The fact that it just works and they really can't 'f it up makes a big difference. Now they can download all sorts of shit games and I really don't have to worry about the system getting hosed. If I considered how much I value my time and the frustration multiplier then it's an investment that has easily paid back in multiples.

Step 1: https://ublockorigin.com/

Have you considered chromeOS for the pc, I’ve had pretty good luck with it as an is for kids, and you can lock a lot down with family controls

If it is mainly for web-browsing, then Linux Mint, with only a web-browser (uBlock extension), and an Office suite. How can you go wrong with that ?

It depends on the usage of course. If there's a need to manage pictures from the phone, some music etc... then Mac OS with non admin account. Buy a 1 To external hard drive and setup Time Machine, you can't go wrong with that neither.

Didn’t want to move away from Windows and Android so:

- declutterred both to the greatest extent possible - made sure auto updates were working - installed Chrome Remote Desktop on the PC and a remote app on phone

I might get 4-5 questions per year and when I visit I’ll make sure everything is working and updated

Being able to remote in from 12,000 km away is a godsend. It’s usually some minor issue like a setting or update stuck.

The elderly are the most susceptible to falling into dark patterns, and most commercial software nowadays is full of them.

Windows 11 was the last straw, I ended up moving my grandma to Gnome. And I control her desktop remotely whenever she needs help.

Also smartphones are too cumbersome after a certain age, when you have subpar reaction time and large fingers.

Mint is great for the elderly as well. It's Windows lite, but random .exe's won't work. And the file system is different enough they won't poke around in there.

I moved them to android (Samsung) tablets: never had any issues.

I moved some elderly friends in my village to Ubuntu without root pass and Tailscale so I can login. Also zero maintenance/issues.

The only times when I get questions is Windows Home with the administrator account and ‘everything’ being generally ‘not working’ after ‘an update’. Sigh.

Blast from the past, but might be useful. Sun tentatively made a computer that ran from cdrom, as TAILS does. The OS was immutable. You could store files on external media. Presumably, have those backed up in time-machine fashion, so as the be able to recover lost files, rather than a snapshot backup.

What a struggle computers are. I am old as dirt but supposedly on top of things. Apple Mail.app forgot my sender address and kept asking me for a "hide my email" From: address. Being a propeller-head, I found it and fixed it. What a fright it must be when things go bonkers and you have no clue.

I don't recall where user settings go on a cdrom OS. Perhaps on a separate home partition or overlay on removable RW storage.

Can't speak for phones.

> Sun tentatively made a computer that ran from cdrom

You mean the NC [1]? ChromeBooks are the modern version of NC.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/mcnealy-sees-huge-nc...

Honestly, quitting is an option. My Grandma gave up on email because it was frustrating, especially after her account got locked out thanks to Google’s weird security setup and her lack of recovery options.

I was a bit upset about it at first. I wanted her to be connected to the family. I made her a new paid email managed by me. She didn’t want it.

But it turns out, it’s not that hard to stay connected the old fashioned way.

I send her photos in the mail with Shutterfly. I call her. I visit her. She doesn’t really need a computer for anything. The finances are handled by the family now, but before that she’d just walk into the bank branch or brokerage office.

I might argue that they are a little closer to not being independent than you think.

Still, some of the advice around here could help. Definitely use mobile device management. Migrate to iPad or Chromebook style devices rather than a full operating system. Take airplane mode out of the control center. Remove all the options they shouldn’t touch. Explore the accessibility options, set the text size and cursors big enough.

I feel for them. I've got a backup image of wife's parents macbook air and ipad that I've had to use a few times. I was using remote desktop software but they once clicked a fullscreen "Your Computer is Infected" ad and followed "Apple Support's" instructions to download a new RD app and give them full control. Luckily the give full control dialog got lost behind the web scam fullscreen. I got rid of remote desktop apps and told them to never allow remote desktop apps again. I've come to the conclusion that any sort of banking or account tied to money is too much of a risk.

My MIL has early dementia. We are trying to keep her living at home as long as possible but her mental decline has made it more and more difficult. Her behavior is getting more and more out of control. She has an iPhone she is attached to. She has YouTube on 24 hours a day. That and she uses FaceTime. Looking back, we should have gotten her an iPhone with a physical home button. Sometimes she forgets how to swipe away apps. In frustration she turns the phone off. Don’t get me started about all the scams. There is a not scammer she completely trusts and will argue non stop with my wife that my wife should listen to the scammer and sign over the house etc.

The home button is one of the most-brilliant pieces of design in computing, period. I’m still bitter that between ditching it and post-iOS6 software design changes they’ve made iOS devices so much less intuitive and friendly.

It was like a little safety net for people who easily get “lost” in their computers. Which is most users! Watch non-nerds use a computer some time. God I miss that beautiful little button. What a step backwards.

Also the borders. My grandma simply cannot avoid touching the screen while showing me something. “Oh, it disappeared”. Borderless devices require very specific, unnatural palm motorics to handle.

Also, when choosing my phone I was between 13 mini and se2. I got se2 and my buddy 13 mini. Our every interaction in telegram ended with <buddy recording audio>, because to swipe away an app you have to squeeze your phone in palm, which touches all sorts of borders. I want to shame everyone “borderless” designer out there, you suck.

Yup I replaced the battery in my old XS and gave it to my mom as an upgrade from her aged 7 or whatever. She hated the swipe gestures and still complains about them. Should'a just bought her an SE.

iPhone SE has them still.

Semi-relatedly, I had my parents sign up for https://www.charlie.com/ There are a bunch of great anti-fraud features including one that lets me be a co-pilot on their account.

Some features: it doesn't allow transactions while they are asleep, can block all transactions online except for merchants that you allow, limit international spend, and they have a feature that you can forward any email that you are curious about and it'll tell you if it's likely to be fraud.

highly recommend.

I've seen you mention charlie in other forums including linkedin. Do you have any affiliation with them?

Linux Mint.

I moved my parents to it from Windows and they never realised since they only use Thunderbird and Firefox.

Never had any issues since then.

If possible, buy them an old iPhone 7/8/10/11. These are fairly cheap at this point and hard to brick or infect.

For PC, just install ChromeOS Flex! It is super barebones and locked down, so even if they download stuff, it is hard to install anything and File Explorer does not give direct access to OS files. You can Turn On linux dev env and install some interesting applications using flatpak, which are adequate and still has limited access to everything unless they are savvy enough to go tinkering around with apt tools.

Fedora Silverlight for PC.

Or ChromeOS Flex, if you need only the browser. Basically zero maintenance system.

iPad and iPhone for mobile devices, they just work. I think slightly outdated devices are the best: they still very good, are cheap and won’t attack with the updates. These days I would say it’s iPhones 6S or 7, and iPad Air 2 or even iPad Pro 12.9 (1st Gen.). They are very cheap, still support all of the basic apps and are very good for anyone. Even I myself use the devices from that epic till today.

Meant Silverblue, but was writing from the phone and so it happened to be Silverlight. Cannot edit the original comment, hence I’m adding this note.

Everybody's suggesting changing to Apple or Chrome products, which sounds like a good idea to me.

With my parents, who are 80 and having an increasingly hard time using technology, I have the added complication that my dad (who is the acknowledged tech guy in their marriage and who probably has OCD) absolutely hates everything Apple, and, now that he in turn manages his 90-year-old sister's use of her Chromebook, is dead set against getting a ChromeOS device either.

We keep all our parents on iPhone + iPad combo. All of them are very heavy iPad users, sometimes it seems they spend 90% of their time reading something in iPad. Honestly, we do not have any issues to resolve at all, everything just works. My wife’s father used to be moderate Excel user for his small business needs, it was a challenge to convince him to try Google Sheets / Docs as alternative but he switched over time.

Around 2005 I was using deep freeze for 20ish Windows 2000 public computers with only documents folder mutable so people could save stuff in there. Worked like magic. I'm not related with the product, just sharing my experience. YMMV.

Edit: link https://www.faronics.com/es/products/deep-freeze

Deepfreeze was a staple of cybercafés in the 90s and 00s

Voice-Activated Assistant App

Hi everyone, I am considering developing an app, which the adult can activate using voice, it will take a picture of his screen and know the details of the device, and help him in context using voice.

For example, if he can't find something in the settings, he can say "Hi Pal", and the application will appear, "I want to increase the brightness of my screen" and then step by step it will lead him on the specific device to finish the task. It may be complex to develop, but it seems to me that there is a lot of need for it.

There seems to be a lot of relevant people here. Do you think this app would be helpful? Do you have any suggestions or feedback on the concept? Thank you for your time and insights!

For PC, I have a relied on ancient Acer Chromebooks for my family and it's worked amazingly. Only trouble they get into is accepting spammy Web Notification prompts.

If I had to get them a PC that wasn't a Chromebook, I'd consider VanillaOS or some other immutable distro.

https://vanillaos.org/

EDIT: Oh, and uBlock Origin is essential.

If you're looking for an easy way to restore Windows to a known-working state, this might be useful: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/iot-enterprise...

It is amazing to see that the recommendation "put them on Apple, enable parent control, it just works" is countered with an argument from an Android user who does not understand the point: using Apple vs. Android / Windows is about how the product make you feel.

Hypothesis: Android UX is more inconsistent compared to IOS and some inexperienced users get anxiety because of that.

Hypothesis: on Android and Windows it is much simply to get maleware etc. then on Apple, because Apple can be closed down completly (and this is great!)

Hypothesis: on Android and Windows you can damage the account/system very easily with a non-admin User, on Apple this is much less likely

Hypothesis: on Android and Windows the amount of admin work needed to keep the device alive is much higher then on Apple

I live this every week. I regularly get calls from my dad about a phone, computer or tablet that is not working right. When I address it, it is always either he is using it incorrectly or we can't reproduce the error a second time--which usually means he wasn't using it correctly.

One thing that has helped is getting him better with voice instructions on his iPhone and Amazon tablet. When he messes up the device by clicking on something, he doesn't know where to tap to fix it but he can tell it to do so verbally. That has reduced the amount of tech support calls.

I also have Team Viewer installed and set up so I can just remote into their computer. I had to delete the shortcuts for Edge (and IE when it was there) because they are more likely to download a searchbar or something than they are with Firefox.

We have switched to chrome boxes and chrome books for our aging parents.

It's not perfect, but at least they are less likely to get viruses or spyware, which was about every 6 months with Windows.

What is it with older people and their penchant to install every possible crapware they encounter, no matter how strongly you warn them?

Lots of good suggestions here but I have a comment. My 90 year old uncle lives near me so I can pop round and help with problems. Trouble is mostly bad UI on web sites.

- finding the login button

- cookie/consent popups blocking page and causing confusion (especially those that dim entire web page).

- finding the close button ("x") on the above

- dynamic UI surprises and confuses basic usage

This week he tried to login to a finance web site from an email they sent him. The only links on the web site were twitter and facebook (UI icons). No actual links to their site, so he failed to login. He was trying to login to their Facebook site using the web site credentials.

The internet/web is very poorly designed for many oldies (and not just them).

Lastly, if they're messing up settings or deleting things, it just needs to be locked down. Tough but better than broken.

I’ve had great success with Bluefin OS. It’s immutable, updates itself flawlessly and automatically, but is still easy to install and remove apps on. Show them where the Firefox button is and you’re done. Plus, it’ll run great on a 2013 Dell Optiplex, or whatever else is lying around.

I think there is a “common repository of knowledge and tools” missing.

I expect there is some dodgy company selling this as a “manage your older parents” app. BUt really this is a social thing. As is “how do I set up a openwrt router to replace my crappy ISP” and “what’s the best way to handle time on YouTube with my 11 year old” and a hundred similar problems that really matter to people

Some of this will be informed by scientific studies - ut these will be easier to do by using the phones themselves. Imagine a double blind study on YouTube habits for 9 year olds, where the researcher gets to download history and run weekly surveys with parents in behaviour etc etc

I am not too sure where I am going but there is as always a missing third space here

90 year old grandma test is the ultimate test of quality and usability of your software/hardware.

Telling from experience - 99% of modern products don't even come close to passing the test.

_Some_ of features of _some_ of apple products come close though.

As a personal successful experiment: NixOS/Xfce o Gnome Shell (require a bit of extra work due to not really smart basic design and extensions fragility), basically the system read-only, home on zfs with snapshots ensure enough local data safety against accidental deletion/bad change. Keeping it up to date is just only updating the config when needed and rebuild.

No commercial software so far offer anything as stable, no classic distro/OS can offer something as stable.

About phones: a Motorola GSM desktop phone for some, a Punkt for those who accept&like a mobile device that's apt for seniors while not crappy as most "for seniors" crap.

I would just go for an iPad with, if necessary, MDM of some kind. With Stage Manager and an external monitor they're fully functional as pseudo-Macs at this point, as long as you don't need anything outside of the App Store.

Hands down Apple products. They all work together well, last a good long time, and have good software coverage.

iPads are the best for those that just need the internet. The MacBook Air is good enough for the advanced stuff, and reasonably priced.

Roku is the one product that I don't think needs the Apple replacement. It is super simple to use, has a simple remote, was easy to tie into a sound system for them. They liked Roku so much that they replaced their older EOL TVs with Roku TVs. Also, I'll lump Sonos into this as they make a great sound product that easily connects to the TV and auto comes on, which is fantastic.

Maybe try Windows S mode ? This is a locked down mode of Windows home edition where you can only install apps from MS store and there are many other restrictions that will prevent accidentally breaking your system.

Consider setting up Screen Time too. My Mum spends literally hours each day on Facebook and Amazon. It's easy for the elderly to get addicted to Facebook and shopping when there isn't much else to do

If you have the local infrastructure for it (or do it on cloud) VDI is an option. It's easy to snapshot, backup, and reimage, and if you store their files on a network drive a reimage won't affect it. You can also easily remotely access their machines to install software and inspect the machine, and you'll be doing so anyways as they shouldn't have root privileges.

VDI can be usably fast even with no GPU; for instance with a 8GBx8vCPU instance on an Ivy Bridge server I can actually watch 1080p Youtube with no frame drops.

A Chromebook a good option.

Definitely not. These timeout creating e-waste and are borderline useless.

I don't know what you're talking about. Chromebooks receive 10 years of updates.

Old people don’t need to care about e-waste, most computers will last longer than them.

iPad with the keyboard was transformative for my in laws. If they need a PC, a MacBook in user mode.

Otherwise a MacBook without admin rights.

Whatever beef people have with Apple, it’s a better solution for this scenario, period. When elders start struggling with these issues, it can make them feel helpless and fearful… avoiding that is both a technical solution issue and quality of life issue.

Futzing around with Intune is a waste of time and requires upkeep. In most situations, you can leave an iPad in place for 4-6 years with no fiddling.

Not PCs, but I consider my parents’ network an extension of mine (with their consent, of course). They are on Unifi gear that I can completely remotely manage.

Forget the PC, move them to iOS devices, and if it’s really bad, set them up as a child account so you can restrict actions like installing or removing apps.

How are they removing system files when the machine is locked down? If you do not grant them local admin permissions and properly configure windows defender and remoting software that should be your solution. You can make the WiFi connection automatic/mandatory with local policies. I have to suggest the "locking down" part was not done properly or at all if a user was able to remove system files.

My current issue in this space is the win11/outlook transition, confusion about connecting all of their accounts with Microsoft online accounts, and new outlook simply not working with our imap setup. (Your imap username must be your email address, and our setup is not that)

What’s the best classic old school imap email client for windows these days?

Thunderbird

Don’t, let them pay for support like a normal person. “I work with servers not phones/pcs”. Cruel? Maybe but so is their taking advantage of their tech literate family.

We actually have a local shop that does really good work. If more tech people refused to do free tech support, this could be a thriving niche (and put geek squad out of business).

The issue with the businesses like that is that they can easily scam tech illiterate people. My mom paid $50 for a person who literally did nothing. She had some error with the motherboard asking to press F1 or something. He did that, did some dust cleaning pretending and that was it. The computer booted, he saw Linux, told it’s some complicated setup (it’s not, a basically default Gnome system). Told her it’s some server system there and his job was done. I was furious she didn’t ask me in the first place. Not to say she could Fking just read what the computer asked her to do.

Like so many other commenters here, buy them Apple. Macbook Airs to replace their PCs and iPhones to replace their phones.

MacOS and iOS are specifically designed to be used by the average man, they're the right tool for this job.

Also: Do not make them use Linux unless you want your time spent as tech support to increase. Just don't.

I bought an iPad Pro 12.9 1st Gen. recently. It costed $150-ish and I’m very happy what I got for the price. So I’m considering to upgrade everyone to used iPad Pros. Most people don’t need a desktop operating system these days. The 1st Gen. iPad Pro won’t get past iPadOS 16, while the current is 17. But I believe it won’t be a problem for the next 5 to 10 years, which is plenty considering the price tag.

However, with Linux it’s much better software-wise: if you have relatively recent hardware, your support would be literally indefinite. I use 15 years old hardware and I can believe it would serve another 15 easily.

There is a huge market (IMO) for elderly/"boomer" support for all kinds of technologies. One thing that made me think about it was seeing an ad for a simple phone designed for seniors that includes "unlimited support" - actually I think it was this: https://www.lively.com/phones/jitterbug-smart4/

Made me think of how many older people are out there who do not have a child or family member type "tech support" person who helps them out. There's millions of them out there. I think there's a large market for that.

It's even broader than tech support. For some reason, services and vendors for the elderly fall somewhere between clinical, patronizing and exploitative. Yet there's so much opportunity to help the elderly with independent living, e.g. accessible furniture and living spaces.

I've found a grand total of one good vendor (Mobb) in home health care, with quality and pricing, plus a few original designs, with manufacturing in Taiwan. They may be a positive outlier because they are a subsidiary of a larger business selling medical uniforms.

The challenge seems to be that most products for the elderly are designed for institutional buyers like nursing homes or state/national governments. So you have the usual misaligned incentives when the buyer is not the user (see: enterprise software).

My wife has survived more than half a dozen strokes.

She accidentally moves around the icons on her Pixel phone until we can not even bring back the list of all apps you get by swiping up.

I need a way to lock down the icons so it would take a very coordinated person to unlock them, but Google refuses to allow that.

To dedicate a device to one app, iOS/macOS has single-app / kiosk mode via Apple Configurator.

My grandma's pretty good with her Android phone, but every month, she calls us totally lost because apps like WhatsApp keep messing with the UI. Why do they have to change the interface so often? Most times, these changes seem pointless and just confuse her.

I got 2 Chromebooks 8-10y ago and never looked back. No maintenance calls, ever.

A problem I had was my grandma's phone battery running out. I made a little Android app that sent the battery level to an API which then put it into a storage bucket so I could see it remotely.

Tell your friend to call his parents more - Most parental ‘tech issues’ escalate as an excuse to see and talk to their children more, rather than the flash attention they usually need to settle for.

VNC + Tailscale. I can VNC into their machines at any time and help them.

I setup my parent's routers to use my NextDNS account and turned on adblock and scam/malware filtering. It has help cut down on a ton of issues they might have seen otherwise.

Not for managing phone, but I highly recommend https://baldphone.com/ as Android UI/skin for elderly

Whatever kind of desktop is used, Chrome Remote Desktop is the most reliable way I've seen of connecting to deal with stuff. Better than Teamviewer too.

My parents are retired and not as computer literate as I hope, and they prefer to keep it that way.

They have Apple products - iPhones, iPads and the Genius Bar takes great care of them.

That's what I did for my mom. She can poke her way around Windows, but she doesn't know how to do backups.

Iphone/Ipad is easy. Automatic cloud backups. I bought her a new iphone, and she was delighted with the transfer of everything. I simply put them next to each other and poked a few bottons. 5 minutes later, all her stuff was moved over.

I really wish there was a way to easily remote control my 104 old grandpa's smart TV... It's not as simple as you'd think

check their stocks

Old people should sell their investments and enjoy themselves more. That's the whole point of investments.

Sigh. I'm a career IT guy; this is yet another thing I'll want to preplan and have ready for my kids.

Given the rate of change, for both UX and scams, I think it's probably best not to pre-plan. There's a very high chance you won't be able to predict the way you'll need to interact with technology in the future. Knowing how stubborn people get as they age, it's likely better to make sure your kids are generally tech savvy and find ways to learn to trust them as you get older.

They'll be better placed to keep up with everything and figure out the best path forward when we're old stubborn gits!

> I think it's probably best not to pre-plan. There's a very high chance you won't be able to predict the way you'll need to interact with technology in the future.

Well, one assumes I'll be cognizant of UX & scams until I'm not. Perhaps by then those 2 will have so much overlap it'll be just one thing to know.

What I wouldn't assume is that my needy future is decades away. It might not be.

MacOS + TimeMachine + iPhone/iPad + Chrome/Google + Chrome Remote Desktop is my 'elderly stack'

It's going to be super interesting when millions of my fellow tech-savvy gen-Xers get really old.

It's obvious that you're on Android + PC because these is truly an outdated question.

I use tailscale and ssh+RDP/vnc setup on all my machines. Makes maintaining them super easy.

Android phones have some decent remote access tools, in addition to the mdm of android and iOS.

iOS also has screensharing through FaceTime which is great for cases like this.

I used team viewer in the past, for trouble shooting. I had it all setup so I could join in one click. But then they updated team viewer and everyone need accounts etc, so the solution became part of the problem and I ditched it.

Nowadays, windows has "quick assist", which works flawlessly to help one windows user as another.

Seeing your elders, who used to be fine with desktop computing, slowly struggling more and more because UX "developers" are a fucking joke is infuriating.

There is also RustDesk which works on Windows but also Mac, Android, and Linux.

I am profoundly grateful that my dad (84) is still very healthy, mentally acute, and tech-literate enough to avoid scams. If anything, he's even more paranoid than I am.

But he will have nothing to do with smartphones even though he's a long time gadget freak with an engineering background, and at this point my mom would have difficulty using anything other than a landline. I got them onto VoIP with an unlocked analog telephone adapter some years back when the poorly maintained landline (loud hum when plugged into the demarc) became too horrible to use.

His frustrations with Windows 10 (and MS's irritating habit of "helpfully" changing your settings) are about to the boiling point, but there's a hell of a lot of Stockholm syndrome involved in getting him to use anything else, not to mention he still uses a DOS app via DOSbox. I'm not sure how insufferable Windows will need to get before he would be willing to jump ship. Windows 8 was enough for me, but only because I can do anything I personally need on any random Linux distro.

iPad + explain how to use FaceTime which can do screensharing with the click of a button without installing anything.

Could even use the shortcuts app to put a big „Call son“ button on the homescreen.

seeing all the comments where people install Linux on their parents computers...

Is this because it's hacker news, or is Linux becoming a non-crazy option for parents?

Linux is actually a great option for elderly people. They have very minimal needs, so they aren't going to run into limitations such as Windows-only software that they absolutely must use. With automatic updates the maintenance burden is minimal, and the risk of malware or viruses is almost non-existent.

You can also ensure that not many things change over time. My parents have been using Linux for over 15 years and they love it. Mate looks basically the same, as do most of the applications they use (file manager, image viewer, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.). There's no strange software required for their Brother printer/scanner and nothing suddenly appears with each update.

I moved my mum over to iPad while she was still around. Best thing ever. Much easier to use for elderly people and it does absolutely everything she needed to do without the hassle of a full blown desktop OS.

iPad and iPhone. Much less to maintain than an Android phone and a desktop PC. Ask me how I know. ;@)

Nokia, that's all

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