Me, Android, and my Mom [opinion]
Today being Mother’s Day, I couldn’t help but look back and think of the role my mom has played in my life so far. It’s kind of difficult not to when people keep sharing this beautiful P&G advertisement on Facebook.
Sure, I might not be an Olympian, but to her I’m running a different race that holds as much importance. We spend a lot of time together, often play golf together, and she’s one of the first people I share anything I create with. More often than not, she doesn’t fit the target demographic, but her approval, and more importantly the excitement she has gives me a whole lot of encouragement.
Going against the usual “iOS is more user-friendly” cliche thrown around the web, my mom actually prefers Android. In fact, a few weeks ago someone brought their new iPad over to have me set up a few things. As an experiment, I opened Google on both the iPad and my Galaxy Tab 10.1, and gave them to my mom asking her to tell me which she preferred.
The Galaxy Tab won, hands down. No over-heating, brighter screen and settings in the notification area were the main reasons. One of the main reasons I want to buy a new phone is so I can pass on my current myTouch 4G to her, so that she’s no longer infuriated with her iPhone 3G (which was given to her by my sister, who has horrible taste in phones).
I often spend time just watching her use my tablet since it gives me some vital knowledge in understanding how people who aren’t as technologically aware as us interact with the device. She found her comfort zone very fast, learning pinch-to-zoom on her own, and even sometimes puts on YouTube while working in the kitchen.
My gift to her on this day? Besides taking her out to dinner, I’ve decided to add her Google account to my tablet, so she can easily read her mails in the app instead of opening the browser. So far, I hadn’t because I didn’t want to keep getting notifications for the chain-mails that her friends’ circulate. But, hey, I can make that little a sacrifice. She’s happy with using the browser so far, but gets annoyed at times when she can’t get the mail she’s reading to take over the complete screen space.
I really hope someone takes out the time to educate this particular demographic the benefits of Android. There’s a lot of money involved here, especially in the tablet market considering for people like her it can act as the only personal computing device required. For some strange reason, it seems like manufacturers have just assumed that this demographic is only interested in Apple. To a certain degree, that’s true, but its generally because of the advertising strategies employed (especially the Droid series). I’d love to see everyone stop taking potshots at Apple, or talking about robots and stuff, and simply focus on family.