Giving MacBook to mother-in-law - how to keep it VERY simple

Make the Dock icons really big and only put Mail, iChat, and Firefox in it. Make the Desktop a photograph of her daughter.

miles01110 said:

Make the Dock icons really big and only put Mail, iChat, and Firefox in it. Make the Desktop a photograph of her daughter.

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Further, create a new user account and enable parental controls on it. Check "use simple Finder". Restrict the applications she can use to Mail, iChat, and Safari.

There are ways to use parental controls to make the finder "simple" and prevent access/running of certain apps. You could always go that route.

You could make the dock fairly large, but you can also make desktop icons large too. As I'm sure you know, they scale really well, so they don't look all crappy when you make them bigger.

Yeah, definitely beaten to the punch on the parental controls

Just thought of another, my in-laws asked me to do the same for their younger children, and I found that restricting the internet to certain sites worked well, but also had limitations. I ended up making a quick link page for their most recently used (and allowed) websites.

I'm sure you wont be restricting the web for your mother-in-law, BUT if you know a little html, or are comfortable with iWeb, you could make a "Start" html homepage for Safari/Firefox that has quicklinks to CNN news, Stock info, NYTimes, etc. Stuff she'd be interested in. It would be a little less intimidating to have 4 links to choose from than a Google search bar.

LewisNYC said:

Would it be possible to have another icon literally open Mail and address an email to us, so all she would have to do is type the body and press send?

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Sounds like something Automator might be able to do... I don't have much experience with that though.

Make sure you give her a decent external mouse, because ive noticed thats the major issue people who have never used a computer have.

LewisNYC said:

That is a really good idea. Thank you.

Would it be possible to have another icon literally open Mail and address an email to us, so all she would have to do is type the body and press send?

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Create a new workflow in Automator, where the only action is "new mail message". Put in the address you want the message to be sent to, save it as an application on the desktop. Maybe give it a nice icon. When she double-clicks the icon, it will open a new mail message already addressed to whatever address you put in.

and make sure she dosen't have your cell phone/e-mail address or else expect a lot of future phone calls.

LewisNYC said:

Would it be possible to have another icon literally open Mail and address an email to us, so all she would have to do is type the body and press send?

Click to expand...

CrzyCanuck72 said:

Create a new workflow in Automator, where the only action is "new mail message". Put in the address you want the message to be sent to, save it as an application on the desktop. Maybe give it a nice icon. When she double-clicks the icon, it will open a new mail message already addressed to whatever address you put in.

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You could do this or put your emails in address book files. In a new mail message, click the "addresses" button and then double click the group you put your email addresses/contacts.

The automator way is more "all-in-one" though. You can also have that in the dock, I think.

LewisNYC said:

Maybe I will be really fancy and create a domain for it.

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Why bother hosting it on a domain; hosting it locally is free, makes it easy to edit, and still functions like a normal webpage with hyperlinks.

To make an email link, you just have to type "mailto:lewisnyc@gmail.com" (replace your username with whatever your email happens to be) into the Safari address bar, then drag the globe icon immediately to the left of the text onto the desktop. Rename link to taste.