People online complain that Linux is hard to install for new users. But who are these people and why do they levy these complaints? The biggest barrier for the new Linux user isn't the installer; i...
Because we keep feeding them stupid pills and encouraging them not to think. Microsoft was a pioneer of the whole âwater down software and call it user-frienflyââ thing.
Thatâs not it at all. You donât think accountants who juggle numbers and Excel formulas all day couldnât learn? Lawyers whose entire job involves absorbing and filtering vast amounts of information? Doctors who diagnose machines that are far more complex than computers (people)? Of course they could; I worked around these people in IT for 20 years, I can tell you that despite how stupid these folks seem around computers they feel the same way about your capabilities in their field of expertise, only they donât have the arrogance to assume that everyone should learn to be a mechanical engineer or dentist in order to understand their job.
What they are is too busy doing other shit that they care more about. They donât have the time or interest to be farting around with a computer to do anything more than the absolute minimum requirements needed to do the shit they actually care about. Human society functions because people specialize, and people who donât specialize in making computers go just donât care enough about them as anything other than as a tool and maybe an occasional source of entertainment to waste their time learning. Just like you donât waste your time learning about how to run a nuclear power plant.
And I say this as someone who used to love tinkering with computers, turned it into a career, and slowly grew to hate it (never turn your hobby into a career if you want to keep that hobby.) I too no longer care about optimizing or fiddling or tweaking, I just want the magic box to work so I can do the stuff I care about (writing, gaming, etc.)
Well, lucky for them their fields arenât under constant attack by droves of idiots constantly being catered to. There is no watering down of those fields in the name of âuser friendlinessâ.
Also, they donât expect people to understand their field, but people donât interact and touch legal stuff or doctor stuff on a daily basis like people do with computers. If they did, then they would no doubt feel the same way about idiots who canât grasp the basics and refuse to learn the slightly more advanced shit.
Itâs 2025. Thereâs no reason for anybody - but especially the older group - to not know what the start button is, or keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste, for example.
What does âwatering downâ even mean? Why is âuser friendlinessâ bad? Do you want computers that are harder to use for some reason? If that was the case why donât you also give up your favorite OS or interface or language and go back to carting around stacks of punch-cards or flipping physical switches to set memory registers? Or are you just trying to make yourself feel superior as a technically-minded person?
Also, I dunno if you know this, but people interact with health and legal shit all the time, thatâs why there are people who only do that job. Reading some email and punching some numbers into an excel sheet are about the equivalent of signing a lease or getting a flu shot. Itâs not their job to know how things work behind the scenes, just like itâs not your job to know how to make vaccines or write legally binding contracts.
And finally, youâre forgetting two important facts.
Older people tend to have been in their jobs longer, and at higher levels where their computer expertise matters less and less
Companies, especially in certain industries, donât update their hardware/software as often as IT would like them to
So that old guy you think ought to be able to know what a start button is might have never seen one because the only computers they use at work are old SPARCstations from the early 2000s, or mightâve worked in a bank for the last 50 years that is still using AS/400s from the late 80s or whatever; those machines canât even run windows. You tell me, what are the keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste on a DEC Alpha? Whereâs the power button on an SGI Onyx? I worked IT in a hospital in the late 90s that was still using computers from the early 70s and shit, it happens way more often than you think.
âWatering downâ is the MS approach to design - take all the power user features, and make them less useful and less efficient to use (or just get rid of them altogether). Itâs a slow burn to âTake that to the nearest certified Microsoft Store so they can repair it for youâ.
The entire design is focused around making things HARDER to use. Less reliance on a terminal, dynamic menus whose contents are clusterfucked into little panels instead of proper menus. Hell, look at the Printers dialogue in Windows 7 and prior, then compare that to the trash theyâve thrown in Win 10 and 11. Everything is designed to look flashy, and be as impossibly inefficient to use. But it looks less intimidating, so stupid users love it!
Reading some email and punching some numbers into an excel sheet are about the equivalent of signing a lease or getting a flu shot.
Not sure where youâre from, but when I get a flu shot, I sit in a chair and somebody who knows how to administer the shot gives it to me. I also donât get a flu shot for several hours a day several days a week. Same with leases, I may sign one every few years at most, and if itâs for something serious then I would get a lawyer involved. That said, I am at least competent enough to sit in the chair and get the shot without asking âwhatâs a chair? How do I sit? Where is my arm?â Likewise, I can read a lease and not have to ask âWhat is a lease? What is a signature? How do I sign this page?â I canât say the same about people in 2025 who say âWhatâs the start button?â or have no idea that decades-old shortcuts like ctrl+c and ctrl+v are things.
Also, if you consider the amount of marketing and exposure to computers that people have had by now, yes, I would expect just about everybody to know what the fuck a Start button is. Shit, if you hold your mouse over it, Iâm almost certain it even pops a tooltip that says âStartâ. Some of these people have worked at this same company for decades, and have no doubt touched generations of Windows software.
As for how to copy/paste on those older computers - I guess it depends on how youâre accessing them as to whether or not you even can copy/paste. But at the same time, I wouldnât be nearly as frustrated if somebody wasnât quite sure how to navigate through something that isnât as commonplace as a Windows computer - you might as well say youâre ânot very competent with pencils and paperâ.
It has not been my experience that MS removes or weakens tools like that. What they do is hide them, like what they did in the transition from the control panel to the modern settings interface in 10/11. Itâs easier for people who donât know what theyâre doing to navigate (and harder for them to stumble into settings that could really mess things up), but itâs just slower to navigate and harder to find the shit you want when youâre not doing bog-standard end-user stuff. But also the control panel is still there and still works exactly how it used to, so you can just use it instead. If thereâs a âwatering downâ there itâs that the search function prefers to return results for for the settings menu rather than the control panel so you have to navigate to it by hand, but you can just pin that shit to your start menu like everything else and keep using it like itâs still 2005.
The entire design is focused around making things HARDER to use. Less reliance on a terminal, dynamic menus whose contents are clusterfucked into little panels instead of proper menus.
Thatâs not âwatering downâ, thatâs improving: making things better for the vast majority of people, while requiring folks like us - whose entire job is to learn and understand computer shit - to bear the burden of having to relearn a few things. I guarantee you there were programmers out there complaining about the widespread adoption of early high-level languages because âby god the best way to code is to manually flip the bits in core memory with a magnetâ or whatever, but itâs no different than when new laws get passed or new diagnostic or treatment standards get approved. Technological progress and reinvention is just the nature of living in an industrial society. If you donât want to keep up with it, pick another field like I did.
when I get a flu shot, I sit in a chair and somebody who knows how to administer the shot gives it to me. ⊠Same with leases, I may sign one every few years at most, and if itâs for something serious then I would get a lawyer involved.
Exactly my point: you and an accountant both have a very shallow, straightforward experience with a complex technical subject because others have gone to considerable lengths to take care of the immense volume of technical details and obscure them from your view. Iâm going to guess that you understand as much about how to safely store and administer vaccines or which of 12 related statutes applies to your particular case as he does about the SMTP protocol or Ethernet, so why do you expect him to not get a professional involved when he runs into âsomething seriousâ just like you do? And keep in mind that what seems trivial to you or I can be quite serious and intractable to him.
I am at least competent enough to sit in the chair and get the shot without asking âwhatâs a chair? How do I sit? Where is my arm?â Likewise, I can read a lease and not have to ask âWhat is a lease? What is a signature? How do I sign this page?â I canât say the same about people in 2025 who say âWhatâs the start button?â or have no idea that decades-old shortcuts like ctrl+c and ctrl+v are things.
This is a straw man. You are exaggerating the stupidity of others to create a false example against which you are arguing, and while a few of those people certainly exist (I had a guy tell me his computer wouldnât turn on and then when I asked him to try his response was to loudly say âComputer, on! â see? Nothing happensâ), most people can muddle through simple stuff like navigating menus even if they donât know what theyâre called.
I did tech support for a couple of years in the late 90s, I have walked people who have literally never touched a computer before through replacing their motherboard (CPU, RAM, cables, even DIP switches and jumpers.) Itâs been my experience that thereâs a kind of mental line that most people draw that separates technical stuff into two categories: âI can probably figure this outâ, and âOMG this is way too much I donât even know where to start.â I have talked to many, many people on both sides of that line, and there seems to be no middle ground. People go from âI think I can swim?â straight to âholy shit Iâm drowningâ. When theyâve assigned computer stuff to the far side of that line they actively reject thinking about it, especially when jargon is involved. If you ask them where their files are stored they might gesture vaguely at the box under their desk, but if you ask them what a hard drive is they will shrug and go âIono man, must be some of that wacky technical shit I donât understandâ. They have some idea what a hard drive - or a start button - is, they use it every day, but if you put them on the spot while theyâre in âI dunno anythingâ mode theyâre not even going to try to make the connection and ask âwait, is that the menu that all my programs are in?â, theyâll just go âDunno man, that must be some of that technical shit thatâs beyond me.â
And it works both ways. I have had certified network engineers tell me âOf course itâs plugged in, what kind of an idiot do you think I am?â when it turned out not to be plugged in. Thereâs the stuff you know and the stuff you feel confident stretching for; everything else just doesnât even get considered.
As for how to copy/paste on those older computers - I guess it depends on how youâre accessing them as to whether or not you even can copy/paste. But at the same time, I wouldnât be nearly as frustrated if somebody wasnât quite sure how to navigate through something that isnât as commonplace as a Windows computer - you might as well say youâre ânot very competent with pencils and paperâ.
The point is that you donât know because you donât have to, youâve never had to use them (and whatâs âcommonplaceâ for you isnât necessarily common at all for others.) The same is true for those people who have been working in banks for decades and havenât seen anything more modern than an IBM PCjr. Your frustration that people donât understand stuff thatâs common to you is equivalent to their frustration that you donât know how to write programs in RPG2 or Fortran. They probably donât think youâre stupid for not knowing why certain kinds of RAM can cause âmake worldâ on BSD systems to fail halfway through, so why do you think they are for not knowing stuff that they may not have been exposed to very much?
I think your expectations might be rather skewed. For example, do you know how common it is to just not own a PC in the days of ubiquitous consoles and tablets and smartphones? I have 11 adult nieces and nephews, two of them own PCs, and only then because their mother wanted someone to play WoW with her when they were kids and they stuck with PC gaming. But every one of them has a phone, at least an xbox or playstation, most of them own a Switch or Steam deck or similar, etc. Meanwhile the last console I owned still had wood paneling on the front (Atari 2600.) Peoplesâ experiences with technology are different, some are intrigued by it and drawn to learn more, some just see it as a tool that sits in a drawer until they need to turn some metaphorical bolts. Itâs absurd to assume that everyone has the same experience and interest and understanding with a subject that you do.
The biggest hole in your argument is that it isnât 1993 anymore, and the internet has a whole wealth of information on how to do shit, not to mention how hard it would be to have never touched a computer if youâre any more than 5 years old.
People could take the 30 seconds to get the answer, but instead theyâd prefer to just be stupid and allow big tech to slowly repeal rights to repair.
Iâve done corporate IT. Iâve talked to people who somehow use a computer every day but still havenât grasped basic 30+ year old concepts.
The reliance on IT to do the most basic shit is great for me from an employment standpoint, but we are equitr clearly being herded slowly toward the "Take that to your certifies Microsoft repair center for serviceâ path. Itâll only be a matter of time before Computers are as pathetic as the pocket computers we call smart phones.
Google and Apple have not just convinced people that they donât need full ownership of their phones, but that having that level of access is actually somehow a bad thing.
Weâre already seeing laptops with batteries sealed in, and not just Surface Pro tablet style ones, either.
We shouldnât be coddling and encouraging ignorance of everyday things. If you can do a jigsaw puzzle, youâre overqualified to build a computer - you may need help picking the right parts, but assembly should be straight forward. If you work a job that requires computer usage, you should know at least the basics of the OS. If you worked in a shop where your job was to cut a pipe to length using a saw, would you really have that job for long if you had no idea how to use a saw, and refused to learn the basics of using the saw? A computer is a tool no less than a saw is.
And the biggest hole in yours is that you canât imagine that people have better shit to do than learn your job alongside their own just to make it a little easier on you. Call me when youâre spending hours every day studying up on medicine and law so that you can also find the answer to your simple medical/legal questions in 30 seconds online just like doctors and lawyers can.
What you have is a magical thing called âjob securityâ that others would kill for. You are needed to figure out complex technical computer shit because other people have other shit they want to be doing with their time. If they actually did as you suggested you wouldnât have a job anymore. But instead of viewing that as a positive - instead of feeling needed and valued for something that you contribute to society - you choose to view it as a negative: any inconvenience exists solely to make your job harder, and how dare people not devote even more of their life to making yours a little easier? I know, I felt exactly the same way when I worked IT, and itâs a big part of why I left.
Yes, companies are simplifying and refining things, in some cases they do remove functionality, thatâs just the way technology works. My dad called himself a shade-tree mechanic, but when I was growing up there was nothing on a car he couldnât fix. Nowadays he takes it to the shop not because heâs prevented from fixing it but because cars have gotten vastly more complicated in the ensuing ~40 years and he - despite being a very capable and technically-minded person - just couldnât keep up with it anymore because the business of doing his job and raising his family was more important.
If you want to be angry at companies for obfuscating or removing functionality then brother Iâm right there with you. Just donât be making assumptions about other peoplesâ intelligence just because they donât have the time or interest to sink countless hours into this just to make your life a little easier.
No, I donât mind them making things easier at all. Itâs when they make them easier at the cost of making the useful power features harder to get to (or removed altogether).
Iâm also not expecting people to be able to understand complex technical troubleshooting or anything either.
Iâm just expecting that people understand the basics of Windows usage. How to min/max a window, what a start button is, what a taskbar is, how to copy/paste text, how to end a task in the task manager (to name a few things). Nothing new, nothing fancy. The windows 7 âDevices and Printersâ style window is something I would expect any user to handle if they need to map a networked printer, or see what devices they have connected in the simplest way.
Because we keep feeding them stupid pills and encouraging them not to think. Microsoft was a pioneer of the whole âwater down software and call it user-frienflyââ thing.
Thatâs not it at all. You donât think accountants who juggle numbers and Excel formulas all day couldnât learn? Lawyers whose entire job involves absorbing and filtering vast amounts of information? Doctors who diagnose machines that are far more complex than computers (people)? Of course they could; I worked around these people in IT for 20 years, I can tell you that despite how stupid these folks seem around computers they feel the same way about your capabilities in their field of expertise, only they donât have the arrogance to assume that everyone should learn to be a mechanical engineer or dentist in order to understand their job.
What they are is too busy doing other shit that they care more about. They donât have the time or interest to be farting around with a computer to do anything more than the absolute minimum requirements needed to do the shit they actually care about. Human society functions because people specialize, and people who donât specialize in making computers go just donât care enough about them as anything other than as a tool and maybe an occasional source of entertainment to waste their time learning. Just like you donât waste your time learning about how to run a nuclear power plant.
And I say this as someone who used to love tinkering with computers, turned it into a career, and slowly grew to hate it (never turn your hobby into a career if you want to keep that hobby.) I too no longer care about optimizing or fiddling or tweaking, I just want the magic box to work so I can do the stuff I care about (writing, gaming, etc.)
Well, lucky for them their fields arenât under constant attack by droves of idiots constantly being catered to. There is no watering down of those fields in the name of âuser friendlinessâ.
Also, they donât expect people to understand their field, but people donât interact and touch legal stuff or doctor stuff on a daily basis like people do with computers. If they did, then they would no doubt feel the same way about idiots who canât grasp the basics and refuse to learn the slightly more advanced shit.
Itâs 2025. Thereâs no reason for anybody - but especially the older group - to not know what the start button is, or keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste, for example.
What does âwatering downâ even mean? Why is âuser friendlinessâ bad? Do you want computers that are harder to use for some reason? If that was the case why donât you also give up your favorite OS or interface or language and go back to carting around stacks of punch-cards or flipping physical switches to set memory registers? Or are you just trying to make yourself feel superior as a technically-minded person?
Also, I dunno if you know this, but people interact with health and legal shit all the time, thatâs why there are people who only do that job. Reading some email and punching some numbers into an excel sheet are about the equivalent of signing a lease or getting a flu shot. Itâs not their job to know how things work behind the scenes, just like itâs not your job to know how to make vaccines or write legally binding contracts.
And finally, youâre forgetting two important facts.
So that old guy you think ought to be able to know what a start button is might have never seen one because the only computers they use at work are old SPARCstations from the early 2000s, or mightâve worked in a bank for the last 50 years that is still using AS/400s from the late 80s or whatever; those machines canât even run windows. You tell me, what are the keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste on a DEC Alpha? Whereâs the power button on an SGI Onyx? I worked IT in a hospital in the late 90s that was still using computers from the early 70s and shit, it happens way more often than you think.
Man, where to even start on thisâŠ
âWatering downâ is the MS approach to design - take all the power user features, and make them less useful and less efficient to use (or just get rid of them altogether). Itâs a slow burn to âTake that to the nearest certified Microsoft Store so they can repair it for youâ.
The entire design is focused around making things HARDER to use. Less reliance on a terminal, dynamic menus whose contents are clusterfucked into little panels instead of proper menus. Hell, look at the Printers dialogue in Windows 7 and prior, then compare that to the trash theyâve thrown in Win 10 and 11. Everything is designed to look flashy, and be as impossibly inefficient to use. But it looks less intimidating, so stupid users love it!
Not sure where youâre from, but when I get a flu shot, I sit in a chair and somebody who knows how to administer the shot gives it to me. I also donât get a flu shot for several hours a day several days a week. Same with leases, I may sign one every few years at most, and if itâs for something serious then I would get a lawyer involved. That said, I am at least competent enough to sit in the chair and get the shot without asking âwhatâs a chair? How do I sit? Where is my arm?â Likewise, I can read a lease and not have to ask âWhat is a lease? What is a signature? How do I sign this page?â I canât say the same about people in 2025 who say âWhatâs the start button?â or have no idea that decades-old shortcuts like ctrl+c and ctrl+v are things.
Also, if you consider the amount of marketing and exposure to computers that people have had by now, yes, I would expect just about everybody to know what the fuck a Start button is. Shit, if you hold your mouse over it, Iâm almost certain it even pops a tooltip that says âStartâ. Some of these people have worked at this same company for decades, and have no doubt touched generations of Windows software.
As for how to copy/paste on those older computers - I guess it depends on how youâre accessing them as to whether or not you even can copy/paste. But at the same time, I wouldnât be nearly as frustrated if somebody wasnât quite sure how to navigate through something that isnât as commonplace as a Windows computer - you might as well say youâre ânot very competent with pencils and paperâ.
It has not been my experience that MS removes or weakens tools like that. What they do is hide them, like what they did in the transition from the control panel to the modern settings interface in 10/11. Itâs easier for people who donât know what theyâre doing to navigate (and harder for them to stumble into settings that could really mess things up), but itâs just slower to navigate and harder to find the shit you want when youâre not doing bog-standard end-user stuff. But also the control panel is still there and still works exactly how it used to, so you can just use it instead. If thereâs a âwatering downâ there itâs that the search function prefers to return results for for the settings menu rather than the control panel so you have to navigate to it by hand, but you can just pin that shit to your start menu like everything else and keep using it like itâs still 2005.
Only for people who are doing complex technical stuff and accessing features that arenât commonly needed by the end-user. For everyone else not having 400 options that they donât understand and will never use cluttering everything up makes it easier to use, not harder. Most end-users never want to see a terminal, and those clustered toolbars make it easier - when coming at it fresh without years or decades of expectations - not harder to find what what youâre looking for. Especially if youâre visually impaired like I am. This strikes me as just âthe way I learned is fasterâ without the awareness that itâs because you took the time to learn it and donât want to have to learn something new. And I get it. I spent hours and hours learning all of the menu hotkey combinations for Lotus 1-2-3 in the late 80s, and I was fast as shit at plucking out those obscure features from 12 menus deep with a few keystrokes, so I was very salty when Excel came along and displaced it with its graphical menus and mouse pointer that was so much slower than the hotkeys I had learned. But also Excel was vastly more popular than Lotus 1-2-3 ever was because it was a lot easier for accountants to use, and Excel has (or had, I havenât used it in a while) hotkeys for most of its menu items anyway (alt+key to pull down a menu, then each entry had a letter underlined so you could quickly pick that option, much like using /, (w)orksheet, ©olumn, (a)dd or whatever from Lotus 1-2-3.)
Thatâs not âwatering downâ, thatâs improving: making things better for the vast majority of people, while requiring folks like us - whose entire job is to learn and understand computer shit - to bear the burden of having to relearn a few things. I guarantee you there were programmers out there complaining about the widespread adoption of early high-level languages because âby god the best way to code is to manually flip the bits in core memory with a magnetâ or whatever, but itâs no different than when new laws get passed or new diagnostic or treatment standards get approved. Technological progress and reinvention is just the nature of living in an industrial society. If you donât want to keep up with it, pick another field like I did.
Exactly my point: you and an accountant both have a very shallow, straightforward experience with a complex technical subject because others have gone to considerable lengths to take care of the immense volume of technical details and obscure them from your view. Iâm going to guess that you understand as much about how to safely store and administer vaccines or which of 12 related statutes applies to your particular case as he does about the SMTP protocol or Ethernet, so why do you expect him to not get a professional involved when he runs into âsomething seriousâ just like you do? And keep in mind that what seems trivial to you or I can be quite serious and intractable to him.
This is a straw man. You are exaggerating the stupidity of others to create a false example against which you are arguing, and while a few of those people certainly exist (I had a guy tell me his computer wouldnât turn on and then when I asked him to try his response was to loudly say âComputer, on! â see? Nothing happensâ), most people can muddle through simple stuff like navigating menus even if they donât know what theyâre called.
I did tech support for a couple of years in the late 90s, I have walked people who have literally never touched a computer before through replacing their motherboard (CPU, RAM, cables, even DIP switches and jumpers.) Itâs been my experience that thereâs a kind of mental line that most people draw that separates technical stuff into two categories: âI can probably figure this outâ, and âOMG this is way too much I donât even know where to start.â I have talked to many, many people on both sides of that line, and there seems to be no middle ground. People go from âI think I can swim?â straight to âholy shit Iâm drowningâ. When theyâve assigned computer stuff to the far side of that line they actively reject thinking about it, especially when jargon is involved. If you ask them where their files are stored they might gesture vaguely at the box under their desk, but if you ask them what a hard drive is they will shrug and go âIono man, must be some of that wacky technical shit I donât understandâ. They have some idea what a hard drive - or a start button - is, they use it every day, but if you put them on the spot while theyâre in âI dunno anythingâ mode theyâre not even going to try to make the connection and ask âwait, is that the menu that all my programs are in?â, theyâll just go âDunno man, that must be some of that technical shit thatâs beyond me.â
And it works both ways. I have had certified network engineers tell me âOf course itâs plugged in, what kind of an idiot do you think I am?â when it turned out not to be plugged in. Thereâs the stuff you know and the stuff you feel confident stretching for; everything else just doesnât even get considered.
The point is that you donât know because you donât have to, youâve never had to use them (and whatâs âcommonplaceâ for you isnât necessarily common at all for others.) The same is true for those people who have been working in banks for decades and havenât seen anything more modern than an IBM PCjr. Your frustration that people donât understand stuff thatâs common to you is equivalent to their frustration that you donât know how to write programs in RPG2 or Fortran. They probably donât think youâre stupid for not knowing why certain kinds of RAM can cause âmake worldâ on BSD systems to fail halfway through, so why do you think they are for not knowing stuff that they may not have been exposed to very much?
I think your expectations might be rather skewed. For example, do you know how common it is to just not own a PC in the days of ubiquitous consoles and tablets and smartphones? I have 11 adult nieces and nephews, two of them own PCs, and only then because their mother wanted someone to play WoW with her when they were kids and they stuck with PC gaming. But every one of them has a phone, at least an xbox or playstation, most of them own a Switch or Steam deck or similar, etc. Meanwhile the last console I owned still had wood paneling on the front (Atari 2600.) Peoplesâ experiences with technology are different, some are intrigued by it and drawn to learn more, some just see it as a tool that sits in a drawer until they need to turn some metaphorical bolts. Itâs absurd to assume that everyone has the same experience and interest and understanding with a subject that you do.
The biggest hole in your argument is that it isnât 1993 anymore, and the internet has a whole wealth of information on how to do shit, not to mention how hard it would be to have never touched a computer if youâre any more than 5 years old.
People could take the 30 seconds to get the answer, but instead theyâd prefer to just be stupid and allow big tech to slowly repeal rights to repair.
Iâve done corporate IT. Iâve talked to people who somehow use a computer every day but still havenât grasped basic 30+ year old concepts.
The reliance on IT to do the most basic shit is great for me from an employment standpoint, but we are equitr clearly being herded slowly toward the "Take that to your certifies Microsoft repair center for serviceâ path. Itâll only be a matter of time before Computers are as pathetic as the pocket computers we call smart phones.
Google and Apple have not just convinced people that they donât need full ownership of their phones, but that having that level of access is actually somehow a bad thing.
Weâre already seeing laptops with batteries sealed in, and not just Surface Pro tablet style ones, either.
We shouldnât be coddling and encouraging ignorance of everyday things. If you can do a jigsaw puzzle, youâre overqualified to build a computer - you may need help picking the right parts, but assembly should be straight forward. If you work a job that requires computer usage, you should know at least the basics of the OS. If you worked in a shop where your job was to cut a pipe to length using a saw, would you really have that job for long if you had no idea how to use a saw, and refused to learn the basics of using the saw? A computer is a tool no less than a saw is.
And the biggest hole in yours is that you canât imagine that people have better shit to do than learn your job alongside their own just to make it a little easier on you. Call me when youâre spending hours every day studying up on medicine and law so that you can also find the answer to your simple medical/legal questions in 30 seconds online just like doctors and lawyers can.
What you have is a magical thing called âjob securityâ that others would kill for. You are needed to figure out complex technical computer shit because other people have other shit they want to be doing with their time. If they actually did as you suggested you wouldnât have a job anymore. But instead of viewing that as a positive - instead of feeling needed and valued for something that you contribute to society - you choose to view it as a negative: any inconvenience exists solely to make your job harder, and how dare people not devote even more of their life to making yours a little easier? I know, I felt exactly the same way when I worked IT, and itâs a big part of why I left.
Yes, companies are simplifying and refining things, in some cases they do remove functionality, thatâs just the way technology works. My dad called himself a shade-tree mechanic, but when I was growing up there was nothing on a car he couldnât fix. Nowadays he takes it to the shop not because heâs prevented from fixing it but because cars have gotten vastly more complicated in the ensuing ~40 years and he - despite being a very capable and technically-minded person - just couldnât keep up with it anymore because the business of doing his job and raising his family was more important.
If you want to be angry at companies for obfuscating or removing functionality then brother Iâm right there with you. Just donât be making assumptions about other peoplesâ intelligence just because they donât have the time or interest to sink countless hours into this just to make your life a little easier.
No, I donât mind them making things easier at all. Itâs when they make them easier at the cost of making the useful power features harder to get to (or removed altogether).
Iâm also not expecting people to be able to understand complex technical troubleshooting or anything either.
Iâm just expecting that people understand the basics of Windows usage. How to min/max a window, what a start button is, what a taskbar is, how to copy/paste text, how to end a task in the task manager (to name a few things). Nothing new, nothing fancy. The windows 7 âDevices and Printersâ style window is something I would expect any user to handle if they need to map a networked printer, or see what devices they have connected in the simplest way.