| The observations in that post are helpful to illustrate the problem. But I can't agree with the author's conclusions. There's another way to read every single one of his examples: as evidence of a design failure. For example: > A message box opens up, but the kid clicks OK so quickly that I don't have time to read the message. Users are so bombarded by unhelpful dialog boxes that many are trained to dismiss them as fast as possible. It becomes subconscious, some users literally can't see the dialogs anymore. > I hand back the laptop and tell him that it's infected. He asks what he needs to do, and I suggest he reinstalls Windows. This is obviously not the users fault. It's the responsibility of the system designers to make it hard to subvert. iOS is now ten years old with no major malware outbreaks -- it can obviously be done (through means that the author doesn't approve of, like application signing). > I take the offending laptop from out of her hands, toggle the wireless switch that resides on the side, and hand it back to her. Poor design decision. Normal users in 2017 basically never want no-network, dedicating the cost of a physical switch to it is doubly bad. My point is that the author needs to stop lamenting that the hoi polloi have breached the gates and start taking seriously the question of how to design general purpose computing that actually serves most human beings. "Use Linux" is not, by itself, a remotely helpful suggestion. His "Mobile" suggestion is indistinguishable from satire. |
If even a company with $200B in ready cash on hand, humongous design and manufacturing resources, and full control at every part of the vertical stack can't make a general purpose operating system with these values, what hope do the rest of us have? iOS is extremely limited in what it allows you to do. If it isn't, then how come macbooks still sell?
I've been a tutor at the tertiary level before. Some people just can't be fucked putting in any effort to get what they want. Fuck them; they get to be called incompetent - don't shift the blame. If someone could barely drive a car and smashed it into every tenth lamppost, you'd call them an incompetent driver. Or another example: I can't cook for shit. I can follow a recipe, but it's not going to be very well done. But you would never make the argument that it's the recipe-writer's fault that I couldn't make a good souffle.
It's reasonable to expect users to meet developers at least partway here; reasonable to expect some learning curve for an incredibly complex, capable device.