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iPad for parents

B

blimundus

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 18, 2006
55
18
My parents have used computers for thirty years, but they are not exactly power users... They can browse the internet, e-mail, edit documents and skype, and that's about it.

I am planning to get them an iPad, loaded with (among other things) scans of their pre-2000 physical photo albums. The scanning is a lot of work, but I am making progress.

My parents have a windows computer, and I have a linux computer that sometimes also boots windows. I manage my photo collection (and just about everything else) on linux. Maybe one day, there will be another mac in the family, but not in the near future.

That rules out using iPhoto. I understand that I can still sync picture folders using iTunes on Windows. This strikes me as not very elegant: any time I want to add pictures to their iPad, I would need to find a way to transfer the pictures to my parents computer, have them run iTunes, sync etc... It's a hassle, especially since I will not be there to help them out (I live a couple of hours away from them).

Would I get a better result if I do not use the iPad's 'native' Photos app, and look for another app, that let's me manage their pictures in the cloud? Any suggestions? Or would that diminish their experience? Their WiFi would not be a bottleneck.
 
Dropbox is great, as others have said. But also, if you already use a sharing or print-ordering site like Photobucket, Flickr, Snapfish, etc, all of them have their own apps these days. Photobucket, at least, does not have a free storage limit like Dropbox does, IDK about other sites. You could upload pics to the site of your choice and they could view them using the site's app, downloading individual pics to their iPad as they please.
 
Dropbox

As the other posters have mentioned, Dropbox is great to use on the ipad. The dropxbox app is also great.
 
Thanks for your great suggestions! I am continuously torn between (a) the fear of the iPad's limitations (seen from a classical computer paradigm) and (b) the great promise the iPad has. Your solutions show me that there will be a way to bridge the gap.

As to the details: assuming that, in this situation, apps are probably always better than a browser based solution, I need to find an app that allows my parents to view the albums even if they are not logged into my account. For example: I obviously do not want my parents to have full read/write access to my dropbox. I also want them to be able to swipe from one picture to the next, comparable to what I would guess is the behaviour of Apple's own photos app.

Do the suggestions that have already been made meet this requirement?

Thanks again!
 
blimundus said:
Thanks for your great suggestions! I am continuously torn between (a) the fear of the iPad's limitations (seen from a classical computer paradigm) and (b) the great promise the iPad has. Your solutions show me that there will be a way to bridge the gap.

As to the details: assuming that, in this situation, apps are probably always better than a browser based solution, I need to find an app that allows my parents to view the albums even if they are not logged into my account. For example: I obviously do not want my parents to have full read/write access to my dropbox. I also want them to be able to swipe from one picture to the next, comparable to what I would guess is the behaviour of Apple's own photos app.

Do the suggestions that have already been made meet this requirement?

Thanks again!
Click to expand...

My Dropbox account is used for both my company and personal. You can control access to any of the folders that you want to share. I would set it up where they can get in but no one else. You can have a different password for YOUR stuff. You can also set it up for anyone to see which is great for posting images in forums.

DropBox could have not done it better and it is cheap! What I like is it works on any OS/Platform
 
blimundus said:
Thanks for your great suggestions! I am continuously torn between (a) the fear of the iPad's limitations (seen from a classical computer paradigm) and (b) the great promise the iPad has. Your solutions show me that there will be a way to bridge the gap.

As to the details: assuming that, in this situation, apps are probably always better than a browser based solution, I need to find an app that allows my parents to view the albums even if they are not logged into my account. For example: I obviously do not want my parents to have full read/write access to my dropbox. I also want them to be able to swipe from one picture to the next, comparable to what I would guess is the behaviour of Apple's own photos app.

Do the suggestions that have already been made meet this requirement?

Thanks again!
Click to expand...

I have one folder in my Dropbox that's shared with someone else for work purposes, and she can't see anything else. I don't know about the swiping, but the photobucket and other photo sharing apps do have that. I don't think they have the same folder-sharing capabilities as Dropbox (who knows though), but you could set up an account with any of them that's just for sharing with your parents, separate from any other photos you've got.
 
That sounds like an awesome gift.

Though next year they'll want an iMac or Mac Mini to make the Apple connection super tight.


Anyway, we use Shutterfly to upload our photos and make books/prints. They have a Shutterfly App that you can use to view the photos and it has folders and stuff. you can swipe to view too.

As of right now you CANNOT make a book or other stuff with the app as they are still working with Flash-based layout program.
 
We're a couple of months later now, and I thought I give you an update. I did not give my parents an iPad; I just bought one and kept it for myself :)

I did make some progress in my plans to scan old pictures, but it really is an awful lot of work. (Maybe it's time to replace my good old noisy canoscan lide 60 with something a bit quicker.) I have finished a couple of albums, but I have many more to go.

As for my parents: nothing's lost for them, because they had no idea they were about to get an iPad anyway, and they are very happy with the iMovie for iPad produced movies of their granddaughter...
 
blimundus said:
We're a couple of months later now, and I thought I give you an update. I did not give my parents an iPad; I just bought one and kept it for myself :)

I did make some progress in my plans to scan old pictures, but it really is an awful lot of work. (Maybe it's time to replace my good old noisy canoscan lide 60 with something a bit quicker.) I have finished a couple of albums, but I have many more to go.

As for my parents: nothing's lost for them, because they had no idea they were about to get an iPad anyway, and they are very happy with the iMovie for iPad produced movies of their granddaughter...
Click to expand...

There are companies that will scan your photos for you. I believe it's not terribly expensive, but of course, you need to label them yourself.
 
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