[Dalewyn]

>People start to see the value of right to repair tractors, people see the value of the first sale doctrine, people see themselves as temporarily embarrased rich gentlefolk, but they are afraid to see themselves as just a few commands away from a power user.

The dissonance stems from the fact that most people don't care about power using.

Users (most people) don't care for messing with their computers because that's not what they're at the computer for. They want to do something on the computer, and the only thing they care about is whether they can get it done.

It's like how most people drive cars to get from Point A to Point B, without giving a damn how a car works or how they could tune the car. If it gets them to Point B then nothing else matters, and tuning their car is a roadblock to getting to Point B because they aren't getting any closer to Point B while tuning their car.

Power users use computers as the end to a means, users on the other hand use computers as a means to an end. More dials and knobs on their computer is irrelevant and even prohibitive for users. Most of us here are all power users and it's natural to want more people to be like us, but the reality is we are not the majority of people on the planet.

As an aside, most of us also gloss over how computers work without a care even as we preach about how the commons must understand the complexities. I doubt most tech bros and neckbeards would understand electrical engineering even as they preach how everyone must understand bash and Powershell.

[brightlancer]

I don't think we're talking about tuning or power users -- this is the equivalent of folks who don't know how to check their engine oil or their tire pressure.

Someone doesn't care how their car works _until their car doesn't work_. Or they want to change something relatively minor:

"Hey I just bought these awesome tires. Please put them on the car."

"Well, those are too big for your rims so you'd need new rims. And I'm not sure if your car can handle larger rims..."

"Why are you making this so difficult?"

[pas]

Oh, that's a nice car analogy! (It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it :D)

... but on a bit more serious note, yes, this is an absolute hard question of how to provide "informed user experience". We all know that using phones, GPS, 4G networks, wikipedia, google translate, NFC payment, etc. makes us rely on them. We don't prepare for long trips, we don't even buy maps, nowadays I even forget to download the offline map.

All models are wrong, some are very useful. Picking the model that >> computers are mysterious and some apps "just work" and anything that doesn't work is "fuck that shit" << works for many people. (And if there's enough social pressure then suddenly even the most user-hostile UX becomes "just open that there, scroll for 10 minutes, tap on that small thing, fill out that form, wait until Zuckerberg personally approves in a few minutes, fill out that 30 CAPTCHA, yes, type your bank account number there, it's just how it works, and sure you can see the funny dancing Asian girls!".)

And ... sometimes people put their cat in the microwave, and open every and all malware, and ...