Where she has difficulty is understanding what you’d use the net for (“You can get recipes on the internet?”). She needed it though - her current way of getting information is Teletext (UK-wide information system built into analogue TV broadcasts). That gives her weather, stocks+shares, TV listings and news, but is being turned off next year when they turn off analogue broadcasts to free up spectrum space. Digital terrestrial TV has the 'red button' info system but it contains dramatically less information.

It is also generally presented in a much less confusing way than any other format, and doesn't have thousands of distracting ads all over the place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_switchover_dates_in_the...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_television_in_the_Nethe...

Same article says though that 90% of the Netherlands uses cable TV and that’s mostly still analogue (guess that’s how he gets Teletext?)

Apparently the last remaining WebTV portal server at Microsoft is getting dusty and flaking out sometimes, so we bought him an iPad (his vision is pretty good.) We preloaded it with bookmarks to local news, stocks, weather, email, a few little reference sorts of apps, and a few games (e.g. he really likes Cribbage.)

At first, he was pretty skeptical, but we spent a few hours showing him all the stuff he could do with it, and he figured it out pretty easily. Now he's perfectly happy with it and likes it a lot better than his WebTV. I'm not sure if he really has a conceptual model of the Internet or anything, but he can do all the stuff he cares about easily.

The most amazing thing to him is Google Maps. He could hardly believe that he could just flick around and see a picture of his house and our houses and all the houses of his friends. I'm not sure he actually bought it when I told him that they drove a car around every street and took pictures.

(This does not mean that touch interfaces are better, though -- just that they are more intuitive.)

My grandmother also figured out the iPad's UI quickly, although she has almost zero experience using computers, and struggles to work her phone. I didn't explore how much more she could do with it though.

Surprisingly though, my father in law, a doctor with some computer experience, struggled a little with his iPad, and only uses it for online banking. I think it had to do with un-learning his old habits.

What I guess from this very small sample is that a touch interface is more intuitive for novices, but could be troublesome for those with some, limited computer experience.

I'm sure there's tons of research being done into this stuff...hopefully it will be distilled into an accessible form soon [an updated Design of Everyday things say].

My 2-yr old has gleefully wiped my PIN-locked iPhone several times, as it was synced to corporate Exchange (Here Daddy! sigh Thank you, dear).