http://www.diverse-group.com/menu/blog.html

It certainly was not all. You suggested technology pamper a minority of elderly people.

Absurd.

Old, young, fat fingers, whatever… If you don’t like a phone don’t buy it. It’s a free market baby, it’s not like they’re designing something that people are forced to use or can’t live without.

The article poses the question of what these gestures could be used for and I gave an argument and example for the use of alternatives, that is all….

Wrecked!

How old am I waiting to be? I’m 48 now… and I’m also the tech go-to person for all my friends and family. In addition, I provide materials and places they can go to ask questions and solve their own problems. if they don’t want to learn, they’ll be left behind. Tapping three times quickly isn’t exclusive to any age group. Why do I keep reading over and over in these threads that grandma and grandpa are stupid?

If grandpa flew fighter jets in WWII, why can’t he be expected to triple-tap on an iPad, for godssake?

My 78 year-old mom refuses to stop using VHS and learn new remotes. Should you and I be stuck with VHS because DVDs are too confusing for her, and remotes having 40 buttons for programming three different machines plugged into the TV is too complicated? She’s not stupid… she just chooses not to adapt. So she simply won’t be using any DVDs. period.

1) Wait until you’re old(er) and your fine motor control isn’t what it used to be…

2) What do you propose? If people can’t adapt then what? Put them out of their misery????

Computers are supposed to make our lives easier. Apple, for all their other faults, are one of the few big companies actively trying to make computer devices easier and simpler to use.

Since when has technology ever waited for older generations to die off?

@Drake: You think triple tap is much? Isn’t that what everybody does when the iPhone slows down? Start tapping the snot out of it only to have several things fire at once?

Being about the only geek in the family I end up being family tech support (I’m sure many can relate) and watching some of the older generations struggle with just double clicks on a mouse I can see they would have a hard time with triple clicks/taps.

Even with long presses, how long should it be? With a shorter trigger time someone holding on to a tap might accidentally trigger the long press and not realize what is going on. Conversely a longer trigger time might lead people to give up holding down and think it is not working. It may seem trivial but for a company like Apple that sells to millions of consumers, one small wrong judgement could lead to a lot of support calls.

Love the app switching 3finger swipe though!!!

If I were an Apple I would implement multi-finger swipes as system wide gestures. For example a 3 finger swipe from the top of the iPhone screen down could ‘pull down’ the previous application you used, making it much easier to switch back and forth between apps without needing to implement full multitasking. A 3 finger swipe up the screen could bring up some kind of quick access dashboard with recent notifications, common settings like wifi & Bluetooth and a side scrolling/swipable list of recently used apps.