“My 4 year old grandson is facile and very adept with his Dad’s iPad. His generation knows nothing of clunky desk top machines that weighed 60 lbs. out of the box,” Joan Lappin writes for Forbes. “He knows only of a slick one pound device with brilliant color, great sound and video right at hand that can transport him to wonderful entertainment, challenging games and great educational opportunities for 10 hours without a plug.”
“I was a late adopter of anything Apple and only came into the fold earlier this year,” Lappin writes. “I was quite surprised at the advantages Apple and its tablet competitors offer to senior citizens with diminishing senses. That includes people with reduced mobility. It is also user friendly for those whose hands, wrists, and fingers, twisted with arthritis, no longer want to cooperate to open doorknobs or to secure or open buttons or shoe laces.”
Lappin writes, “There is one major flaw in all the tablets I have seen thus far including the iPad. It is the high gloss glass on the faces of these devices. A well known photographer once told me that after 40, most people don’t like to look at photos of themselves because they don’t like how they look. If you are a senior citizen, each and every time you open your iPad in any kind of bright light, you are forced to look at every freckle, age spot or whatever on your face whether you want to or not. Maybe somebody could replace the high glare glass with something a little less like a mirror. That way as you expand the type to see what you are reading, you don’t have to look through your own wrinkles to see the text!”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
• Age should not have its face lifted, but it should rather teach the world to admire wrinkles as the etchings of experience and the firm line of character. – Clarence Day• We have to be able to grow up. Our wrinkles are our medals of the passage of life. They are what we have been through and who we want to be. – Lauren Hutton
• Jewelry takes people’s minds off your wrinkles. – Sonja Henie
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
I don’t share the described experience at all except when using FaceTime or Skype video. But reflections of myself – never. He must have a defective unit.
However, The Truth about people is they do not want to die (and age, which precedes death). So, as science advance, wrinkles will definitely go. Not it is possibly only to the likes of Barbara Walters, but it will become cheaper in the future.
Even more: Barbara’s voice which always screams that she is ninety, will be fixable to again have smoother, higher younger timbre.
However, this all will only come in the future. For now, when only few people can handle such costs as Barbara Walters, and the voice tune-up is not even possible yet, the respect for natural wrinkles is a must for any (striving-to-be) moral society.
What the hell?!?!?
Sorry;correction: “… Now it is possible only … “
Agreeing with MDN, celebrate life and living, don’t cover it up;
”Life should NOT be a journey
to the grave with the intention of
arriving safely in an attractive and
well preserved body, but rather to
skid in sideways, Champagne in
one hand – strawberries in the
other, body thoroughly used up,
totally worn out and screaming
‘WOO HOO – What
a Ride!’” ”
— Mavis Leyrer
I saw a T shirt in a rafting store that said “Scars are tattoos with better stories”.
I prefer the version which includes chocolate and Glenmorangie!
A Zen thought used backed in the days of Mac’s introduction: “The Journey is the reward.”
If having a brief glimpse of yourself is that awful, then get a case for your iPad which has a magnet in the cover so that the iPad turns on as soon as you open it. My case from Pad and Quill does just that (not that I care about the reflection thing), and my iPad looks like a book when it’s closed. Love it!
That’s a clever way to say a gloss screen sucks. Maybe touch and matte dont work together but I think a matte screen has advantages with regards to excessive glare including the one brought up in this article.
Good for you MDN for that excellent take on aging and wrinkles. Our society mistakenly honors youth by linking it with wisdom and cleverness. Too bad for the young that they must wait a long time to acquire wisdom and cleverness. You might wish to include George Bernard Shaw’s take: “Youth is wasted on the young.” How true!
I prefer “Inside every old person is a young person wondering what the hell happened.” I don’t know the origin.
It’s a phase I’m going through, so this all has meaning to me. I’m not afraid of mirrors like this author, but I suspect thats a male vs. female thing.
Huge design error? What nonsense! I’m a senior, and once the iPad is turned on, provided it isn’t outside in the sun, you can’t see (or quickly don’t notice) any reflections.
True, the aging process does age the face and body. Get over it. It’s who you are!
That’s why old people’s eyesight get worse with age – so they don’t have to see those wrinkles etc..
Perhaps there should be a Portrait Professional Studio filter built into FaceTime. 😉
Ah, yes, well… hmmm… OK problem solved.
I’ll don my Mask of Zorro (Full-Face Edition) the moment I wake up.
Wrinkles? Now that’s stretching…
“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.” – Mark Twain
The solution to gloss is simple… matted film screen protector. DONE!!!
Apple can’t fix your ego.
lol that is an awesome complaint.
“Its a great device but it makes me look old”
LOL
As a person approaching 70 years of age, I appreciate MDN’s take on this news. Proudly bald, wrinkled, and age-spotted, I say to hell with the hair growth medicines, the wrinkle removers, and all the rest of the desperate cosmetics. I prefer the honesty of my battle scars. I refuse to engage in a pathetic denial of reality.
The writer must be a vain person… unless you have lots of extra $$$ there’s not much you can do about aging. Life, love it and live it or leave it.
The glossy screen makes the iPad horrible to use in anything other then low light. Only reason I have one is because Power Support makes a great matte screen protector.
Of coarse I do understand that a native matte screen isn’t doable for a touch screen device.
A zillion fingerprints and glare are more offensive.
Get an anti-glare film. Problem solved.
http://www.powersupportusa.com/accessories/ipad-2/hd-anti-glare-film.html
If you’ve used an iPad you’d see that from the user’s perspective any smudges and fingerprints are completely invisible. Only people looking from the sides see that stuff. So it’s not a problem at all.
I see. . . . A really good screen is a defect.
I understand the next model will be dreadful.
Here is a message for author Joan:
Apple did come up with an elegant solution to the mirror problem. Turn the iPod on so the screen lights up. That makes the mirror problem go away.
“I think we have things backward in this society. We should value those wrinkles just as we value the twisted branches of an old tree. They are beautiful because they represent survival. They are beautiful because they are who we really are.”
Correction: iPod for iPad
Here is a message for author Joan:
Apple did come up with an elegant solution to the mirror problem. Turn the iPad on so the screen lights up. That makes the mirror problem go away.
That is why, from day one, my original iPad 3G’s glossy screen was masked by a matte screen protector. Does a great job at defusing light bulb reflections, bright windows, etc.
Form day one – I placed a matte screen protective film over top mine also. The Brand I had purchased came with both a regular film and a matte version. ITS a FANTASTIC OPTION for those who prefer it.
After being overseas – I later replaced the matte covering because it had been tampered with – lifted up at the corners.
I replaced it with the regular version and noticed the clarity of image I had been missing. I do like the anti-glare from the matte – but prefer the regular over it.
Seriously, my folks (in their 80’s) have a hard time even with an iPad because of the “fumble factor.” They’re always accidentally zooming off in the wrong direction and then can’t easily recover. I’d suggest that every iPad come with a simple toolkit of big buttons that can activate favorite apps, launch streams, etc. with a bare minimum of fuss.