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blackhaz | 11 days ago

Same as Windows 3.1, and Windows 95, up to 2000. After some point computers began to be optimized for a non-technical person and here we go... Ads, auto-updates, pop-ups, bright colors, all this fucking desktop circus.

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Nition|11 days ago

The older OS's with their simple interfaces and clear buttons were easier for non-technical people as well. I'm not certain who they're really optimising for now, exactly... shareholders?

wlesieutre|10 days ago

Large teams of designers that need to justify their existence by changing things

jychang|11 days ago

Nah, that's a cop out answer. Can't blame everything on shareholders when all the major Linux DEs do the same.

jcgrillo|10 days ago

> a non-technical person

Otherizing your users like this IS THE PROBLEM. Every technologist was once a "nontechnical person" (for whatever definition of that useless term you like) who learned and grew and thereby became "technical". The very minute you start thinking of your users in these terms you have lost the entire fucking game.

I broadly agree with your point, but I think the causal root of the problem is this industry arrogantly treats it's users as, to quote Mark Zuckerberg, "dumb fucks." We didn't always do this. It used to be better.

blackhaz|10 days ago

Not sure I understand you - what game, market capture? There are environments that remain more or less sane (e.g., FreeBSD, Xfce, etc) that don't play this game, if I got you right. I guess treating users so helps capture more of the market share, but it looks like there's only so much dumbfuckery one can inject into the environment until the curve begins to drop and dumb fucks themselves begin to run.

Philips just screwed up my TV. They've updated the firmware (of course, it was automated) to make home screen more of a dumb fucking experience with everything animated and self-playing movies jumping out at you for no reason, and so on... But the interface is now completely unusable - literally can't even launch YouTube. No amount of resetting helps. They also hid all the previous firmwares and I can't even roll back from a USB stick. I am a dumb fuck when it comes to TVs. And I will most likely be considering another brand next time.