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Remote access iPad Air annoying mail feature

AndyP

AndyP

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My father has asked me to get him an iPad on a sale and return basis. If he does not get on with it I will buy it back off him :D . He is 84, IT illiterate and the whole email, web thing is all very new to him.

For what he expects to do with it, email his favourite son, skype with the grand kids, surf a we bit I reckon it could not be more simple and I can certainly set it up so all the unneeded apps are out of the way.

He will not be loading 1000s of photos, playing music on it, typing documents, using iCloud, buying from iTunes etc.

Now supposin' he does get in a pickle with it. Is it possible for me to remote access it? Everything I have read so far implies it is not without jailbreaking ( a term I loosely understand and a route I will not go down ).

There seems to be plenty of apps that let you control the Desktop iMac from the iPad but not vice versa.

Have I missed something?
 
No to remote access, but realistically there's very little in the way of pickles in which to be got.

Set up his contacts in address book, set up email and FaceTime then it's just a case of ensuring he knows which buttons to press to make them work.

Really is a piece of cake.

Cheers
Mark
 
Where does he live, Andy? If he's close to me I could always help him out in the unlikely event he gets stuck.
 
Mark, I tend to agree and that is what I am hoping for. Certainly my experiences with the iPod Touch over the past year convinces me that it is way more simple than opening up a laptop, waiting for the latest MS upgrades to load and finding a way around windoze in general.
The whole slidey finger technique will be alien to him of course but we will try.

I will upgrade by iPod to IOS 8 at the same time so at least I can see the same OS as him.
 
RogerS":3krfbfx8 said:
Where does he live, Andy? If he's close to me I could always help him out in the unlikely event he gets stuck.
Click to expand...

Roger, that is very kind of you but he is in SE London, Bromley.

As unfortunately my brother has yet to see the light as far as Apple is concerned and to the best of my knowledge all his friends and neighbours are either luddites or android & PC users.

I'm kinda hoping he does not get on with it and I'll take it back.
 
My wife and I find them very easy to manage.
You can set them up for automatic App & Software updates and backing them up to iTunes, iCloud etc, whenever you can, will keep most things safe?
You could always post-up help queries on here?
The new ones come with a lot of software which if you backup first before removing them - you can always reinstall if needed?

Rod
 
Andy

I noticed in Waitrose this morning that there is a magazine-style "iPad for Seniors" for £9.99. Guess you'd also get it in WH Smith. I have the Samsung Galaxy book and think it well written.

Having said that while trying to google to find the link for this book I did see that there is a similar title in the Easy Steps series....another excellent set of books IMO.

There is also one in the Dummies series ...a series that I utterly detest as (a) I loathe their folksy style and (b) the way they will tell you once, tell you twice, tell you the same thing a hundred times in the American prose style of 'I will use 1000 words when 10 will suffice'. (See what I did there / ;) )
 
thanks Rod, I confident that I can solve most problems, or find the answers nit so sure that Pop will understand though.

Roger, thanks I've added one to an Amazon order. Agree about the Dummies series although it got me out of trouble in the early days of mac ownership.
 
Andy, has your Dad got his iPad yet? How's he getting on with it?
 
I set the iPad Air up earlier in the week and my father is making progress.

You have to remember that at 82 and apart from using MS Word on a laptop this is his first really piece of IT.
First email, first web access etc etc. Therefore 90% of what the iPad can do is wasted on him and irrelevant but it IS very simple to use. Although finger swiping took a while to get the hand of.

My only real gripe ( this is not a problem to him) is one annoying "feature" in Mail. Unless the open mailbox is empty the last viewed email is always visible behind the mailboxes list. Whether in portrait of landscape the mailboxes list does not cover the whole screen NB this is definitely NOT a preview pane setting and is discussed at length on a number of support forums.

Could any other IOS 8 iPad users comment on this?
 
Can't really help, Andy, as I am only on iOS 6.

Apple works in mysterious ways. It seems that, since Steve Jobs, these ways are ever more arcane judging by the very many threads out there across many forums. Nay, some say they have lost their way with the latest software user interface and design. The analogy with car manufacturers came up on the Apple Community Forum (25 pages and counting about why iTunes 12 sucks!) and one poster said ..

"if you purchased a car and had to spend as much time sussing out how it worked as one has to with an Apple product would you bother?"

to which I replied ..

"I chuckled at that as I envisioned a Ford designed a la Apple's latest and greatest.
Hidden controls. Hidden switches. You caress the drivers' console to see what lights up ! You see an oncoming emergency and hit the brake only to find it's been moved and is now in the trunk (boot)."
 
I cannot say that I ever set it up so I assume it's a default setting?
On my Mail, there's a summary box on the left pane with who it's from, title and brief message - unread ones have blue dot on top LHS
When you click it the blue dot disappears and the full message appears in full in the Right view pane.
Cannot see what the problem is with that?
I often don't bother reading the full messages unless important and just click off the blue dots.
When you go into Mail it also tells how many unread ones are present (if any)
Very easy to save important ones to personal, receipts etc folders.

Rod
 
That's always going to be the case because you have to have at least one email highlighted, unless, as you state, the inbox is deleted.

Why is this a problem for anyone in the world? I'm not being facetious here, this doesn't even register in my conscious. It has to work somehow and this is exactly the same way Outlook works so it's not peculiar to Apple...

Cheers
Mark
 
Mark, I kind of agree. But for me on the iPod Touch and the iPhone you only see the list of mailboxes. It just seems cleaner that way.
 
That's purely a screen size thing. I have a mate at apple (through our relationship with them in work) and was asking him about a few things and that's definitely the reason it's done that way otherwise there would be so little of the visible preview that it's not really worth it.

Cheers
Mark
 
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