Through the eyes of a child
We upgraded devices, and our children gained hand-me-down iPads. Watching them set up their first iCloud accounts and explore their new devices was awesome.
This weekend we upgraded my wife’s iPad. This meant that my older iPad 3 and her original iPad mini 1 were available for our kids.
They had been using 2012 nexus tablets. Arguably these were from a similar era to the iPads but they lag so much when doing certain tasks now. The iPads do too at times but nowhere near as much. It’s a statement on how well iOS9 can run on older devices perhaps but that’s besides the point of this post.
What was really awesome was setting up both children iCloud accounts, putting them on family sharing and being able to let them just explore their new devices and play.
My eldest was really pleased to be able to iMessage. Both kids spent a good while sending silly photos and picture messages to each other and me and my wife.
I started typing messages back from my Mac. When I told my eldest that was how I was chatting he was amazed and had to check it out. We had a chat about how messages are routed through the net, and how it all syncs up on whatever device I’m on.
We played with FaceTime too, which he thinks is awesome.
The thing that really struck me, was seeing all this anew from a child’s point of view. The discovery process they went through with the UI and the capabilities of the device were all found easily through play.
The power of these devices to them is very much in the sharing and communication available to them straight away.
There’s a lot to be said for that.