My 82 y/o dad lives alone about 30 minutes away (with no traffic) and we sometimes cannot make it to see him physically on a regular basis. He's had health issues in the past which he won't mention on the phone but where if I had seen it in person (or video) we could have prevented an emergency hospital visit. So.....my solution was to buy him iPad so we can video call regularly if a physical visit would not be possible. I settled on an iPad after many weeks of researching but we may need a better solution. I've removed or hidden non-essential apps already.
He has essential tremors of the hands (not Parkinson's disease) and bad eye sight so even the simple act of "slide to unlock" is difficult. I got him a stylus but I don't think that has made a difference. I've looked at the IFTTT or Workflow apps but those don't seem to have any functionality that would auto-answer or make it easier to answer a facetime or skype video call or use the iPad.
I've looked at several products targeted to this problem like the Bloom (where's the buy button?), Skype for TV (discontinued), Amazon Echo Show ("drop-in" function is most promising. I would get one for him and use the app on my phone), Ily (again, how do you even buy this? It's got an app for one of the parties), Nucleus (promising, I think I'd need to buy 2 to make it work) and some other ones.
I can't seem to find the "one". Does it exist? I don't think another iOS app is the solution. It's the hardware that is the challenge right now. I need to get him onto the iPad first before dealing with software challenges.
Do I just suck it up and spend the $229 (+tax) on the Amazon Echo Show and "drop-in" whenever needed? None of the other functions like Alexa, music, smart home etc. would be useful or used. I literally only need the video calling. Is it a waste for it to be a single purpose device? Does it matter?
Does anyone have any experience with any of the other products I listed? Or can you recommend something I haven't seen yet? I think I read somewhere that iOS 11 will have the ability to auto-answer phone calls, but I don't know if that would apply to facetime on the iPad, and it's another few months before it's released anyway.
I've already spent over $300 on the iPad, a stand and a stylus. If the Echo is the best solution then I'll bite the bullet and get one, but here in 2017 is this the best there is to communicate with a technologically challenged eldery parent?
Thank you.
He has essential tremors of the hands (not Parkinson's disease) and bad eye sight so even the simple act of "slide to unlock" is difficult. I got him a stylus but I don't think that has made a difference. I've looked at the IFTTT or Workflow apps but those don't seem to have any functionality that would auto-answer or make it easier to answer a facetime or skype video call or use the iPad.
I've looked at several products targeted to this problem like the Bloom (where's the buy button?), Skype for TV (discontinued), Amazon Echo Show ("drop-in" function is most promising. I would get one for him and use the app on my phone), Ily (again, how do you even buy this? It's got an app for one of the parties), Nucleus (promising, I think I'd need to buy 2 to make it work) and some other ones.
I can't seem to find the "one". Does it exist? I don't think another iOS app is the solution. It's the hardware that is the challenge right now. I need to get him onto the iPad first before dealing with software challenges.
Do I just suck it up and spend the $229 (+tax) on the Amazon Echo Show and "drop-in" whenever needed? None of the other functions like Alexa, music, smart home etc. would be useful or used. I literally only need the video calling. Is it a waste for it to be a single purpose device? Does it matter?
Does anyone have any experience with any of the other products I listed? Or can you recommend something I haven't seen yet? I think I read somewhere that iOS 11 will have the ability to auto-answer phone calls, but I don't know if that would apply to facetime on the iPad, and it's another few months before it's released anyway.
I've already spent over $300 on the iPad, a stand and a stylus. If the Echo is the best solution then I'll bite the bullet and get one, but here in 2017 is this the best there is to communicate with a technologically challenged eldery parent?
Thank you.