Jason LefkowitzI occasionally help an elderly neighbor get stuff done with their computer. And every single time, I walk away in incandescent rage at how hard we have made this stuff for people who have not spent their entire waking lives marinating in it
Someone posted a reply saying that computers were harder in the past so it's fine they're hard now, which earned them an instant block. Thanks for identifying yourself as the kind of person I want nothing to do with
jtonline@jalefkowit I'm sure computers were much easier in the past in many ways. I get exceedingly angry about all the dark patterns and BS my 12yo has to put up with these days.
@jtonline They were bad in the old days, but it was more excusable then (IMO) because the whole field was so new. Everybody had to figure out from scratch what worked and what didn't. Plus computers were much slower and had less resources; there weren't CPU cycles available for things like nice interfaces.
Today we know what works and we have the resources to do it. We just don't, because someone can make more money by making things hard
@jalefkowit true, fiddling with little switches to get a mouse working was definitely bad! And it definitely seems like the incentives are all wrong these days. :(
DJDarren@jtonline @jalefkowit My mother in law had to force-reboot her laptop the other day, but couldn't because she has arthritis and the stupid, artfully designed tiny little power button was too small and tough for her to push.
NatalyaD@jalefkowit @DJDarren @jtonline
My mum did just fine with a BBC micro and specific keyboard commands for markup in word processing which my dad printed and stuck to the noticeboard for her. Mum learned the 5 or 6 most useful by heart. Same for Claris Works and Apple System 7.x.
The UI didn't change. The computer did not pop shit up at her. There was no spam (or Internet).
I was also home 90% of the time to fix or talk Mum thru stuff patiently cos Mr Computing Degree Dad got grumpy.
I leave home and Mum works as a teacher, using Windows.
Mum downloaded all kinds of malware marketed as "toolbars" "clipart for schools". Lots of meltdowns about popups/crap. Panic clicking the X button on ALL dialogs.
Appleware from 2015 onwards has been better, but it's still not easy, although she's calmer now (retired) and I have remote-access options.
Amazon tricks Mum into Prime subscriptions a lot. I've trained her to phone & middle class harass em
As well as now being elderly, Mum is dyslexic and she's got a lifetime of suffering from male sexism, where men make her feel stupid for not being as good at a technical thing as she is.
There's sometimes where my partner and I (both female) can get Mum to do stuff or listen where no man can, cos she's not tensed-up for the expected sexism and sneering (or obvious THINKING sneering thoughts badly suppressed).
Glad your neighbour has you. It's not easy.
@NatalyaD @jalefkowit @jtonline I'm at a point where I'm wondering whether it might be beneficial to put Mint on my 2011 MacBook, and give it to MiL.
She already uses Firefox, so all I'd need is to make sure that's prominent and available and signed in to her account. We'll be able to remote into it if anything does awry, and I can run software updates in the background.
It has no battery, but she never moves her current laptop anyway. And it'll be a damn sight more stable than the budget Windows laptop she currently has.
I have my mum on iOS on her 2016 Macbook which was new when she bought it and we've kept going since. I run updates and time machine each visit. She manages Chrome or FireFox as browsers and Libre Office for documents (and she is uneducatedly dyslexically horrific with a spreadsheet regardless of application).
In a way as long as it is stable, consistent, you have the useful apps in 'the place for apps' I think it can work well. Windows is however hell.
@NatalyaD @jalefkowit @DJDarren and I'm getting more grumpy about stealth menus all over the place: vertical hamburgers, horizontal hamburgers, upside down ^s, etc. etc.
3 vertical dots. And the other 3 dots in a subtly different place. (Yes, MS Office, that is you!)
And the cog.
And the horizontal dots.
Or the V click down triangle open or coloured in.
And Win 11 whose different settingses don't even properly overlap (and breaking a load of features).
I live in Linux at home. It's not perfect but it is 95% less bad and annoying. And has better fucking fonts.
I've had more recent opportunity to type it... And I knew what you meant, which is all that matters.
IU changes drive ME up the wall and I'm computer literate. It's a nightmare for disabled ppl who I work with/for.
I see folk presenting via online video thwarted by UI changes that mean their test run or last week's presenting UI doesn't work anymore. UI change wasn't announced, it just changed.
Often OS/apps update on a 5-90 min timescale then force a reboot WHILE WE ARE BUSY or mid-presentation/meeting etc. Work ppl send apologies for this all the time.
@jalefkowit @DJDarren
@NatalyaD @jalefkowit @DJDarren gah, it's a miracle more computers don't end up flying out of windows!
@DJDarren @jtonline @jalefkowit
I worked with a neurodivergent student who DID literally throw their laptop out of the window. That was a tricky arrange-a-replacement cos the funding entity considered it deliberate damage and we had to really bash into them that it was disability related behaviour.
And a lot of work was done with laptop 2, "whatever happens, do NOT break this laptop, cos you won't get a third".
Fazal Majid@jtonline @NatalyaD @jalefkowit @DJDarren it's driven by marketing Apple's pointless Liquid Ass being a case in point.
@DJDarren @jalefkowit that's unhelpful 🤦
AnneH@jalefkowit @jtonline It was surprising & fun when it worked.
Stephen Dioxide 
@jalefkowit @jtonline I got a Masters in information science 25 years ago. The class that sticks with me most to this day is the one where we did real-life user testing.
The software industry needs to do a LOT more real-life user testing.
Kent Navalesi ☕️and FWIW it's questionable whether computers really were harder in the past.
@KentNavalesi I spent too much of my life trying to configure sound cards on MS-DOS, so I wouldn't say the past was perfect either 😆
I just like to think we can always do better.
Paul Cantrell@jalefkowit @KentNavalesi This is a question of great and genuine interest to me.
My Apple ][+ was definitely a hard brick wall to somebody who’d never used one. Also, any specific piece of software behaved in extremely limited, extremely consistent ways, so that once somebody had learned to use it, they could continue using it.
My first-gen iPhone was a miraculous device. I could hand it to somebody who’d never used a touch screen or a “smart“ phone of any kind, and they would — without exception! I tried this experiment multiple times! — be able to figure out how to use it just by experimentation and intuition. I really don’t think that’s true of iPhones now. But a current iPhone offers far more capabilities.
Were computers easier or harder in the past? Or just •differently• hard? How? Whose needs have we prioritized? Whose comfort?
mirth@inthehands @jalefkowit @KentNavalesi The 70s micro and early DOS PC and Mac era, really the whole floppy/tape era, had another thing going for it: If something went wrong you just turned it off and on again. Nothing you did on your BASIC coding disk could break your homework disk. None of this "if my kid plays with my phone for a minute my e-mails will be deleted, $200 worth of burritos will show up at my doorstep, and my co-workers will receive ten photos of their potty" situation.
SysAdmin1138@mirth @inthehands @jalefkowit @KentNavalesi This is unintentionally a parable of increasing automation increases the scale of disasters, and I have to think about this for a while.
@sysadmin1138 @inthehands @jalefkowit @KentNavalesi Interesting way of looking at it. Computers also went from being mostly a calculating and storage thing to having communication be the primary use for a lot of people, which complicates the situation.
Ian McDowall@inthehands @jalefkowit @KentNavalesi at the same time as the first iPhone was released, other phones (I worked for Symbian, a now extinct smartphone OS company) came with an extensive printed manual.
To be fair, you could guess most of it anyway but it shows the assumption that any device required a manual.
To be fair, you could guess most of it anyway but it shows the assumption that any device required a manual.
Julescelt@inthehands @jalefkowit @KentNavalesi The latest iOS update really pissed me off. And you're so right about the older apple systems, they were intuitive.
nellie-m@inthehands @jalefkowit @KentNavalesi
My very first computer was a (then somewhat outdated) Macintosh Performa. OS 7.6.11 iirc.
I loved it. It came with little tutorials like „mousing around“ for people who had never worked with a mouse, and it always seemed to provide several ways to achieve the thing you wanted. It all felt very intuitive to me.
Everyone around me was cursing their windows machines and I always said, get a Mac. The ones who did were happy, too.
So in my experience, these computers weren’t difficult to use.
Annelies Kamran, Ph.D.@KentNavalesi @jalefkowit but you didn't have to use them for every damn thing
Gregory@jalefkowit well they're half-right. Computers were hard before GUIs became commonplace and mature.
But they conveniently glossed over the fact that there was a period of about 15 years when computers were easy. That ended when most companies that build software realized they could manipulate users instead of serving them, that they can ship "experiences" instead of tools.
Daniel Lyons@jalefkowit old computers didn’t have to deal with 2FA, Passkeys etc. on dozens of services just to start up your computer
Andy B@jalefkowit you sound like a massive fuckwit cunt.
(Feel free to block me too!)
El Duvelle@jalefkowit computers were harder in the past?? Maybe in the 1980s when you had to use DOS (or whatever the name was) to run games.. From the first windows it was piece of cake and just working.. Much much better than the dreaded Win11..
RiaResists@jalefkowit Thank you for helping her 🙏🏼
@RiaResists That's what a neighbor is for 😀
Chipotle Axolotl (aka Julian)@jalefkowit it's hard enough for people with 40 years of marinating.
RyeNCode 🇨🇦@julianlawson @jalefkowit
I used to be marinated it in, then they charged what it was,
- an old techie, me. I'm old and a techie -
SamuelJohnson@jalefkowit 100%. My worst ever support call was one from my elderly mother complaining her iPad was displaying "a cigar in a wine glass" that wouldn't go away. WTF?
2 hour drive later: it was Siri. Activated by a software update done by a "helpful" nephew she had promised not to give access. Long press invoked it. She had a tremor so all presses were long (no adjustment possible). Only funny side: Siri messages reprimanding her for bad language.
Dented her confidence hugely.
Thanks Apple.
Lukas Parker@samueljohnson @jalefkowit thanks Tim Apple
@jalefkowit There's a funny account somewhere of Steve Ballmer trying to clean up viruses on his mother's computer and thinking it would be easy.
Byteback@jalefkowit I've spent more time pouring over event logs so far this year for tier 1 support tickets than ever before.
Between the January updates and windows just being shit, you're absolutely right.
Between the January updates and windows just being shit, you're absolutely right.
Chris@jalefkowit Really?
Wanna go back to fucking around with IRQs and config.sys?
Installing Windows 3.1 from floppy disks?
Removing and re-adding TCP/IP from your dialup adapter in Windows 95 every week?
Screwing around with BBSs and BTX?
Getting printer drivers delivered by snail mail?
Bluescreens on a daily basis?
Reading the 300 page manual for Word Perfect?
All without Google?
I think measured by the possibilities a modern system delivers it has become incredibly easy to use.
jtb@thechris @jalefkowit But in those old days most people didn't need to use a computer. Now everything involves a computer, everyone has to deal with the government websites.
@jtb @jalefkowit If those websites are shit, that's not today's conputers' fault.
But he blocked me anyway because I dared to have a different opinion, so fuck this.
But he blocked me anyway because I dared to have a different opinion, so fuck this.
maxdepth@thechris @jalefkowit Spot on, I couldn't agree more. The fact he blocked you over such an obvious statement tells me he doesn't have skin thick enough to be in IT very long.
Mark Burton@thechris @jalefkowit
Nah, just install Linux.
(Someone had to say it)
Orb 2069"Why do you have to restart your computer to fix so many problems? Most coders don't take their job very seriously."
Daryl the Admin@jalefkowit My 40s self appreciates my then-40s parents struggles with VCRs oh so much more.
Canadian Curmudgeon@jalefkowit My grandfather, the bookkeeper for his church, in his 80s used a massive manual, hand-cranked adding machine with row after row of buttons. When I offered him my pocket calculator instead, he shrugged and said he just didn't want to learn something new at his age.
I worked with newspaper reporters who didn't want to make the jump from typewriters to word processors.
I started using PCs back in '77 when I bought a TRS-80, so I've marinated in tech for a long time.
I worked with newspaper reporters who didn't want to make the jump from typewriters to word processors.
I started using PCs back in '77 when I bought a TRS-80, so I've marinated in tech for a long time.
Jeff MOVED > @CdnCurmudgeon @jalefkowit I also suffer from the affliction "marinated in tech", is that what we call this old stew flavour?
@jeffhorton @jalefkowit
Depends on when you started. I began with changing tubs in TV sets and radios in the '50s. That's tech paleontology. So fossilized instead of marinated might be more appropriate for my cohort. After that, instant dinner tech or maybe transistor tech...then LED tech, laser tech...
Depends on when you started. I began with changing tubs in TV sets and radios in the '50s. That's tech paleontology. So fossilized instead of marinated might be more appropriate for my cohort. After that, instant dinner tech or maybe transistor tech...then LED tech, laser tech...
Jade P.@jalefkowit as a non technically oriented, middle aged person, it is much harder to get computers to do what I want them to than it was 20 years ago. I haven't marinated in technology, but I've watched it develop from a distance since the 1980s. Now I have to mentally suit up for battle to get anything done online. Sure, I understand why people say it's easier now, but it's also burdened with stuff I don't want and can't easily escape. I'm looking into getting a non networked PC.