by Telaneo | 2026-01-03 04:30:32+00:00
> How do you all deal with (extended) family? This Christmas I spent time with my parents and the topic of Windows 11 came up again with all of its associated dark patterns.

The mom and dad gen are all on iPads or just phones from what I can tell. Very few people there use PCs for their personal computing (work is another matter, but mostly not relevant to this discussion), and those that do are more power user-y. This group largely don't need help beyond edge cases in my experience.

The grandma and grandpa generation are mostly the same story, but there's a lot more who have more or less just bailed completely outside of the absolute essentials (online banking, literal phone calls). Some are still on PCs out of a desire to not change things too much, but I'd imagine switching them over to an iPad is probably an overall improvement once you can get past the unwillingness to shift over to another system. The fact that Windows 11 is such hot garbage will hopefully aid in convincing people of that.

For those who still want a PC, there's Linux. My grandma is on Mint, but that's just because I'm her personal tech support. If I weren't around, she'd have bought a Windows 11 machine from whatever idiot at the local electronics store. I can't imagine that would have gone very well. She'd have probably bailed completely on computing if it came to that.

Very few people in this group of people need software beyond what basic Linux can provide, so Linux should be able to provide a better environment than Windows, but that are loads of potential edge cases, but they're all very small, but all very annoying if you find yourself in one.

> What kind of issues do you run into being your parents IT support?

Mom and Dad: 'Hey, can you help me with this website?' -> 'It's broken, try again tomorrow.' or 'Try that button there.'.

Grandma: See previous.

'How do I do [thing that hasn't changed since Windows 95]'?

'What do I do here?' -> 'Read the message on the screen and act accordingly.'

'My mouse doesn't work!' -> 'Check the batteries.'

Most of these later issues are because she treats the computer mechanistically, one unchanging step at a time, so if anything doesn't go to plan, she functionally panics. I don't know how to solve this problem, but it seems endemic to me given how common of a trope it is in stories from computer savvy people helping the not-so-savvy.

I can't remember where I heard about it, but it probably comes from the fact that a large-ish portion of the population can't connect concepts to things that don't have tangible forms. Thus, all the invisible processes inside any computer (files, memory, networking) that any computer savvy person will be aware of, don't exist and don't make sense in the mind of the not computer savvy, since it has no tangible form. You can find a similar case with office phone systems. Transferring a call is apparently hard for a number of people, since a call isn't a tangible item, doing anything with it makes zero sense. At best you can get them to place calls on hold, but that's only because their office phone will have buttons with blinking lights that say 'Line 1' and 'Line 2' on them, and they can thus easily connect the light blinking with the call on hold. Suddenly it's tangible, and thus it can make sense.