[MrYellowP]

Rando: "Gud, why's there no video player installed? How do I get to play my video player?"

Gud: "Just use the operating system's package manager."

Rando: "What's that? How do I find it?"

Gud explains what it is and how to find it.

Rando: "Wow, finally found it. What do I do next?"

Gud: "You search for a video player. Try [...]."

Rando: "I can't find it. This sucks. Why is there no video player installed by default? Makes no fucking sense."

Two hours later you've managed to achieve installation.

Rando: "I don't like this player. I want a different one."

Yeah. No. A video player should be installed by default.

Period.

[ehutch79]

I can't reply to Gud below, but their comment really shows they haven't worked with real users at all. A lot of people on hacker news assume everyone is in the demographic of hacker news for some odd reason.

It absolutely can take 2 hours to help someone with a task it would take you 2 minutes to do (with 1.5 of those minutes watching progress bars)

Some people are just dumb as rocks. Some, if you say to click a button labeled whatever, they will instead close the window. Some will just get up and walk away while you're talking to them. Some arn't dumb, but are just trying to stretch time to keep from having to go back to work. Some people won't tell you their laptop turned off because they're not plugged into power.

[darkclouds]

> Some people are just dumb as rocks.

Or maybe they have become apathetic for what's on offer.

Its not like anyone documents what data is sent back to base by an app, and its not like anyone is even looking at how to use the firewall to block data phoning home, in order to protect privacy and reduce the attack vector from opportunists with network access.

This all seems like a side show.

[ehutch79]

How is any of that relevant to walking a use through self install of an app. From an app store or managed software centers, or wherever.

[darkclouds]

The app store demonstrates the computer in which it runs is not yours.

[Gud]

Presumably these users would be in a managed environment.

[ehutch79]

Yes. It didn't help obviously.

[rationalist]

Rando: "I don't like this player. I want a different one."

Gud: It's the player installed by default.

Gud spends the next two hours helping Rando install a non-default video player (and possibly battling Microsoft for the default apps for all of the different file types associations).

[Gud]

?

Normally you would select which software to install during initial setup.

And FWIW, there is no way it would take me 2 hours assisting someone with installing a video player. Maybe 10 minutes.