ryochiji's blog

Exactly how user friendly is MacOS X?

My 3.5 weeks in Tokyo are almost up, and I'll be heading back to the US in a few days. When I leave, I'll be leaving my friend iDucky behind. iDucky is being re-enlisted as my mom's first computer, and as such, I've been giving her "computer lessons". It's actually the first time (in quite a while, at least) that I've had to teach someone who's totally computer illiterate how to use a computer, and the first time I've had to do that with MacOS X, so it's been an interesting experience...
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posted in Geek Stuff at 05:10* [869 comments | View | Add Comment ] [PermaLink] [Trackback]

To be honest, I haven't actually taught my mom how to use a computer. Since I only had a week or so, I decided to just teach her how to do the things she wanted to do, and completely ignore everything else. For example, she doesn't know what an application is, or, for that matter, what files are. She barely knows what windows are, other than how to make on go away.

Here are a few things about MacOS X I found beneficial for people like my mom:

Strong multi-language support
Since Japanese is my mom's first language, it's a good thing MacOS X has great support for Japanese built-in. The text input system (kotoeri) is pretty good, and there's excellent language support in the standard software (Mail.app, Safari, iTunes).
Multi-users
Multi-user OS's are great in general when you have to share a computer with someone else, but the really nice thing in my particular case is that with MacOS X you can choose a different native language for each user. My user has English as the primary language, but my mom's account has Japanese selected.
The Dock
Before this, I never thought of the Dock as being a particularly user friendly feature, but it is. All I had to say was "When you want to check your mail, click on the stamp icon" (for the Mail app). The nice thing about the Dock is that it's always there, and it's big. Unlike desktop icons, it'll never get hidden, and it's always clearly visible (unless you make it hide itself).
Built-in SMTP server
This is specific to my particular case, it's nice to have an SMTP server built into your machine. I created an IMAP account for my mom on my server, but I've disabled relaying on my server. Normally, I tell people to use their ISP's SMTP servers, but for my mom, I just enabled SMTP and told Mail.app to use localhost as the outgoing server.
Stability
This is the biggest thing. All my mom's Windoze using friends have computer problems all the time (basically, the OS crapping out on them, viruses, porn worms, etc), but I'm fairly certain that iDucky will continue to function until the next time I come here (which might not be for another 3 years). In fact, I'm more concerned about hardware failure than the OS breaking down. Now that I think of it, I haven't even taught her how to restart her computer...
Functional virtual memory
Like most novices, my mom makes programs go away by closing windows associated with them. I almost started telling her that she should quit applications, but then, it seemed kind of pointless. I myself hardly ever quit applications in MacOS X once I launch them, and after a few weeks, I usually have over 20 apps open. I couldn't think of a good reason for my mom, who only uses at most 3-4 applications, to quit any apps (perhaps, other than to reset memory leaks).

The only problem I can think of is the lack of support and possible application incompatibilities. By lack of support, I mean the lack of Mac users in her immediate surrounding who can help her when I'm not there. I don't foresee any application problems for a while, considering how little she does (and intends to do) with her computer, but it's a concern nonetheless.