this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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Or users could maybe learn how to do things without having their hands held and treated like babies every step of the way; or at least how to search for information to find what they need... 🤷🏻♂️
They could. But you and I both know they won't because most people don't care about anything beyond 'make the magic box work so I can do my job / play my game / etc.'
Because we keep feeding them stupid pills and encouraging them not to think. Microsoft was a pioneer of the whole "water down software and call it user-frienfly'" thing.
That's not it at all. You don't think accountants who juggle numbers and Excel formulas all day couldn't 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 don't 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 don't 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 don't specialize in making computers go just don't 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 don't 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 aren't under constant attack by droves of idiots constantly being catered to. There is no watering down of those fields in the name of "user friendliness".
Also, they don't expect people to understand their field, but people don't 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 can't grasp the basics and refuse to learn the slightly more advanced shit.
It's 2025. There's 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 'watering down' even mean? Why is 'user friendliness' bad? Do you want computers that are harder to use for some reason? If that was the case why don't 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, that's 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. It's not their job to know how things work behind the scenes, just like it's not your job to know how to make vaccines or write legally binding contracts.
And finally, you're 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 might've worked in a bank for the last 50 years that is still using AS/400s from the late 80s or whatever; those machines can't even run windows. You tell me, what are the keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste on a DEC Alpha? Where's 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 this...
"Watering down" 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). It's a slow burn to "Take that to the nearest certified Microsoft Store so they can repair it for you".
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 they've 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 you're 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 don't 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 it's 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 "what's a chair? How do I sit? Where is my arm?" Likewise, I can read a lease and not have to ask "What is a lease? What is a signature? How do I sign this page?" I can't say the same about people in 2025 who say "What's the start button?" 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, I'm almost certain it even pops a tooltip that says "Start". 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 you're accessing them as to whether or not you even can copy/paste. But at the same time, I wouldn't be nearly as frustrated if somebody wasn't quite sure how to navigate through something that isn't as commonplace as a Windows computer - you might as well say you're "not very competent with pencils and paper".