A reader wrote last week asking whether a Mac would be better for a child than a PC. She is a PC user and her daughter is eight. Her friends are Mac users and apparently they are rabid fans. Her daughter's needs are simple - creating art on the computer, downloading music, surfing the Net for school assignments and cutting and pasting information into a Word document. About halfway through her letter, I was flooded with warm memories of my own child and his many Mac accomplishments. By the time he was six, I had him reviewing age-appropriate software for me. Needless to say, I answered her with a resounding: 'Yes, get your daughter a Mac!'
The reason I was so enthusiastic was not because I, too, am a rabid Mac enthusiast, but because the computers of my PC-using friends' children rarely work. Sometimes the parents aren't computer savvy and a small problem equates to hours of debugging or hundreds of dollars to call in a technician to get it working. Sometimes the dead computer has been stricken by viruses or security breaches. But the reality is this: who has time to fix or even update their child's computer?
My family is a perfect example. Half of my extended family own PCs and half use Macs. But the computers of PC-using nieces and nephews don't seem to work until the kids are old enough to fix their own machines. The Mac-using nieces and nephews, on the other hand, have been creating delightful projects unassisted on their machines since they could reach them. All that said, there are lots of software solutions that make the Mac a superior platform for youngsters. Obviously, the iApps are child-friendly and there are some remarkable programs available specifically for them. Here are some of my favourites.