How FaceTime saved my holiday

Some of you who read this site may have noticed that I have not been very active these last two months. You may have noticed that the weekly podcast has not been recorded lately and I am not doing nearly as many video demos, etc. I have a very good reason as to why my production on this site as come to a stand still. My father.

My father has a rare type of Leukemia, seems weird to refer to it as such. I mean isn't any type of Leukemia rare? Either way he has been battling for about 5 years now and he has been doing pretty good up until about 3 months ago. The last couple of months I have been driving to upstate New York to visit him in the hospital every few weeks and it has really started to take its toll and has become very mentally exhausting. Not that I mind or don't want to be there for him, but it has ruled my life and Total iPad is just a hobby that has been put on the back burner for the time being.

Anyway, the reason for me writing this is about the iPad and more importantly it is about FaceTime and how I used it to spend Christmas day with my father.

A couple of weeks before Christmas my father had a doctor appointment and his doctor told him he was too weak to travel. So my uncle asked about video chat and was that possible if he bought my father a laptop. Me being an iPad guy told him to scratch that laptop idea and lets get him an iPad instead. Both my uncle and my father are computer illiterate, neither of them own a computer or even a smartphone for that matter. So I knew the iPad would present the least amount of challenge as far as setting up the device etc. So my uncle went and bought him an LTE 16gb iPad mini.

Like I said my father didn't own a computer or a smartphone as matter of fact he didn't even have an email address. Could you imagine living in 2012 and not even having an email address? Anyway, I wasn't sure if FaceTime was available over cellular data with AT&T for FaceTime, so my uncle got the cable guy to come over there and install broadband internet and hook up a router for him.

My uncle goes and purchases the iPad and leaves the setting up an Apple ID to me. I go to Walmart and buy a $50 iTunes gift card. I then take one of my older iPads and wipe the Apple ID account info on it and then create a new Apple ID and an iCloud email address on the device and use the $50 gift card as my payment option. Now all my uncle had to do was power-on the iPad and go through the setup of the new iPad. When he got to the Apple ID part he just used the ID I created and that was it. My father was now the proud owner of not only an iPad mini but also an email address.

Christmas day is here. I am sure some of you may already be asking yourself why didn't I just go and visit my dad on Christmas day. Long story, short: I have a daughter who lives with her mother and our deal is I get her on Christmas evening. I am sure I could have made arrangements but I wanted my daughter to have a normal Christmas or as normal as possible. Anyway, I get my daughter that afternoon and called my father on FaceTime and we celebrated Christmas using our iPads. FaceTime worked flawlessly, the video quality was superb, and even though my father was hundreds of miles away he was still in my living room on Christmas day with me and my daughter. Matter of fact all of my family came over to his house that day and we ate dinner at the same time while we talked via FaceTime.

I know there are plenty of other technologies that work the same as FaceTime, but FaceTime was in my opinion the best option for my father to use. He didn't need to download or install any apps. He didn't need to create any additional accounts to use the service. I am very thankful for all these new technologies in general but I am super thankful for FaceTime for easing our time of pain and enabling my daughter and I to enjoy our holiday season as much as possible.

While I didn't use FaceTime that often before, I am glad FaceTime was there for me when I needed it the most. I now use FaceTime everyday to call my father and check in on him. Something that I didn't see much of a need for before has now become a Godsend. My father has fallen in love with is new iPad, so much so he is looking at buying an iPhone 5 now. Who knows, if he can get through his chemo and is able to put a hold on his sickness maybe next year he will be calling me on FaceTime from his new Macbook Air. Hopefully he will be sitting in the living with me and we won't need FaceTime on Christmas. My fingers are crossed!