Hey everyone,
My 83 years old mom has finally reached the point where she can't live at home anymore. Of course her move to a care home comes at the worst possible time as covid precautions makes it nearly impossible to visit her in her new home right now (they only allow the odd pre-planned visit, in a special room with a clear plastic divider...).
So, I'm looking at the ca. 4-5 years old iMac that I bought for her and wondering if maybe I could set that up to become an awesome communications hub for her new home. I've begun doing research on this but I'm finding so many possible solutions, some of which cost quite a bit of money, and since it's all getting very confusing I thought I'd just post here and see if anyone has some tips. Or even experience of doing the same thing.
Firstly: the difficulty is that my mom has both mobility and dementia issues that prevent her from doing all but the most basic operations from her side. I mean even clicking one single 'OK' button on the screen will be a challenge for her. Keyboard use is out of the question. So, I'm hoping to be able to remote control as much as possible of these operations.
Now, the first aim is of course to make frequent video calls possible. Here I assume that I can set the computer to screen sleep only, and have FaceTime wake the screen when we call her. We would call on the phone first and have her be ready to accept the call, and then hope that she is able to do it.
We will of course be able to ask the staff to help her accept calls etc., but maybe not as often as she'd like, we don't know yet how available they'll be for stuff like that.
But what would also be wonderful is if we could completely remote control the Mac to play music for her from the Apple Music app, maybe video and music from YouTube, movies, show photos from the gallery etc. All this of course depends on having a reliable setup for remote operation of the computer.
So, does anyone have any tips for how to achieve these things? Any pointers will be greatly appreciated! As I said, I have begun doing research myself, but I'm having trouble finding reliable and understandable solutions. For example the most seemingly straightforward option - Apple Remote Desktop - has a super low 1.8 rating on the App Store, and if it doesn't work as it should, we'll have wasted about $100. It's very hard to sift through all the options I find online so it'd be great to hear from anyone who has actual experience of doing something like this.
For clarity, I'm an experienced Mac/iOS user and quite good with computer stuff in general, but I have never used remote desktop functionality and I'm not at the level where I'll readily understand command line prompts etc. I'm fully Apple based myself and am set up with a 2015 MBP, iPad Pro 2018 and iPhone 11 Pro (12 Pro Max on the way
)
Thanks for reading, I hope you're all healthy and able to stay close to your loved ones in this time of difficulty and separation.
My 83 years old mom has finally reached the point where she can't live at home anymore. Of course her move to a care home comes at the worst possible time as covid precautions makes it nearly impossible to visit her in her new home right now (they only allow the odd pre-planned visit, in a special room with a clear plastic divider...).
So, I'm looking at the ca. 4-5 years old iMac that I bought for her and wondering if maybe I could set that up to become an awesome communications hub for her new home. I've begun doing research on this but I'm finding so many possible solutions, some of which cost quite a bit of money, and since it's all getting very confusing I thought I'd just post here and see if anyone has some tips. Or even experience of doing the same thing.
Firstly: the difficulty is that my mom has both mobility and dementia issues that prevent her from doing all but the most basic operations from her side. I mean even clicking one single 'OK' button on the screen will be a challenge for her. Keyboard use is out of the question. So, I'm hoping to be able to remote control as much as possible of these operations.
Now, the first aim is of course to make frequent video calls possible. Here I assume that I can set the computer to screen sleep only, and have FaceTime wake the screen when we call her. We would call on the phone first and have her be ready to accept the call, and then hope that she is able to do it.
We will of course be able to ask the staff to help her accept calls etc., but maybe not as often as she'd like, we don't know yet how available they'll be for stuff like that.
But what would also be wonderful is if we could completely remote control the Mac to play music for her from the Apple Music app, maybe video and music from YouTube, movies, show photos from the gallery etc. All this of course depends on having a reliable setup for remote operation of the computer.
So, does anyone have any tips for how to achieve these things? Any pointers will be greatly appreciated! As I said, I have begun doing research myself, but I'm having trouble finding reliable and understandable solutions. For example the most seemingly straightforward option - Apple Remote Desktop - has a super low 1.8 rating on the App Store, and if it doesn't work as it should, we'll have wasted about $100. It's very hard to sift through all the options I find online so it'd be great to hear from anyone who has actual experience of doing something like this.
For clarity, I'm an experienced Mac/iOS user and quite good with computer stuff in general, but I have never used remote desktop functionality and I'm not at the level where I'll readily understand command line prompts etc. I'm fully Apple based myself and am set up with a 2015 MBP, iPad Pro 2018 and iPhone 11 Pro (12 Pro Max on the way
)Thanks for reading, I hope you're all healthy and able to stay close to your loved ones in this time of difficulty and separation.
