I never liked it, but maybe it’s because I was never really good at using Windows for what my family uses it for. I’m bad at windows, I’m bad at office and I’m terrible at printers. And since they always used whatever standard browser and usually some obscoure e-mail program for the e-mail that came with their cable internet 9 billion years ago, it wasn’t fun to be the “IT guy” just because I know how to write programs.
It was truly amazing for me when they all bought iPads and never needed any form of support that their immediate family couldn’t handle for them. Not only that though, it helped them get into the digital age, so they could use their online banking, be on social media with their grand children and be somewhat protected from themselves and the wider internet by Apples walled garden.
Of course the flip-side of this is that a lot of people aren’t actually very good at using computers today. Which ironically is a much bigger issue for younger people than the elderly. When I was in the public sector it was the 18-25 age group which scored the lowest on “digital prowess” which meant they’d sometimes get in a lot of trouble because they failed to perform some very basic tasks, like filling out a form on a website because “it wasn’t an app”. I guess you could argue that the public sector is sort of at fault for not building apps for everything to keep up with the times, but it’s something we see everywhere in society still. My wife works with dyslexic youths and it continues to amaze her just how much help they need to get the helper programs our government programs supply students with to work. To you and me it would likely to be a fairly simple task to get some document reader to work on Mac OS but she has students who need repeated lessons in how to keep it updated or not get locked out of it, or even how to get it to use a library as default if they aren’t saving things in the standard documents folder. I guess for most people it doesn’t really matter, but I think it’s amazing that we’re so digitally illiterate as a society in 2023. Especially here in Denmark, one of the most digitalised countries in the world.
> they failed to perform some very basic tasks, like filling out a form on a website because “it wasn’t an app”
Curious, could you elaborate on it? Could they navigate to the website at all? Were they confused about cookie banners or other enshittification? Or about control of the browser itself, e.g. how to move to another field/page?
Not the person you asked, but I have early-twenties (non-technical, generally from lower-SOE backgrounds) users who have literally never used a desktop / laptop operating system before, and have had to be taught how to type a web address into a browser. Manipulating a mouse / trackpad was a new skill to acquire; understanding folder and file structure, same; pull-down menus; Office apps.
These aren't stupid people - they're well-qualified for and good at the rest of their jobs - they just haven't been in a position where anything "tech" has ever involved anything other than an app (or, I guess, auto-loaded browser shortcut?) on their phones. Using keyboard shortcuts is black magic, which some of them take to with delight, and others will never remember to try.
They did not acquire any new knowledge now, but OS and interfaces made them confident to do things without thinking twice.
Or it is just that I am super nostalgic for the old times...