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Comment by bonch | Hacker News Reader

So your dad knows how to use Outlook, iTunes, and Facebook. Can he install applications? Update drivers? Install Windows security updates as they come out and keep his anti-virus up to date? Tablets remove all that stupid maintenance crap, and that's why they are PCs for normal people.

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Why does the fact that the input mechanism is a finger instead of a mouse affect installation of applications, installing security updates, and updating drivers?

These are two completely independent factors.

There is nothing magical about a touch screen that instantly removes all the complexity in an operating system: you're drawing false correlations. "This tablet X is easier to install applications on than this computer Y. Therefore, touch interfaces make installing applications easier."

I didn't imply at all that it was the touchscreen that makes tablets easier. I thought by the examples I gave that it was clear I was talking about the simplified paradigm of a typical tablet--a centralized store to purchase, install, and update apps; a fullscreen, one-app-at-a-time interface; no antivirus, antispyware, defraggers, registry cleaners, and so on; and a highly mobile hardware device that comfortably rests in your lap and requires no hookup or peripherals to run.

Why does he need to use Outlook? He uses Yahoo mail. He managed to install iTunes. The printer installed without a hitch via the HP software. Windows updates install themselves these days unless you disable it.

My mom is paranoid about viruses and installed Symantec, but the paranoia also ensures that they don't click on weird crap coming thru email. Sidenote: my mom upgraded the laptop herself from Vista to Win7 without bugging me, praise jeebus!

PCs aren't mystical, I don't know if the expertise of maintaining them is some kind of totem that geeks cling to but hearing about problems with them is the exception instead of the rule these days.

If you think problems with PCs is an exception to the rule, you're living in a dream world. The point is that, on a tablet, your parents wouldn't have had to go through the hassle of installing slow antivirus software or "manage to install" things. Installation and uninstallation is so simple that the PC method of multistep installers and uninstallers immediately looks incredibly archaic.

There are other tasks like managing photos, watching and editing movies, installing third-party software, and more that I bet your parents have trouble with or flat-out avoid on a PC. These things are easy on an iPad. Not to mention the constant threat of malware, no matter how paranoid your mom is.

If there's a totem that geeks cling to, it's the fear of the PC going away and the fantasy that PCs aren't overly complicated to an embarrassing degree, or that everyone can magically learn how to use PCs if they'd just spend hours every night on them like geeks do. It's symptomatic of a real lack of perspective when it comes to how the public deals with the standard PC. You and I think they're easy because we spend most of our time on them. They are our living or our hobby. Most people aren't like that.

You still need to know how to use iTunes to use an iPad.

Additionally, you generally don't need to know how to update yur drivers or antivirus. Those get updated automatically on Windows. The only thing you need to know how to do is install applications. Which 95% of the time is to double-click setup.exe or install.exe.

I'm the tech support guy for my extended family. I support around 30 or so computers. What I've found interesting is over the past year or two is that support calls have dropped to about one every other month. And they're no longer things like, "My computer isn't working." They're more like, "How do I know that the backup program will work when I need it?"

If you think you don't need to know how to update drivers or maintain antivirus software on a typical PC, then your experience isn't typical of the majority of users or the poor sobs who do technical support for them.

On a tablet, there is no running an installer executable. You just tap. Uninstallation is also just a tap. It's undeniably superior.

I think you are confusing tablets as a form factor with tablets as they are currently implemented today. There is no reason pcs can't remove all that stupid maintenance crap as well. (In fact it is on list of startups that Ycombinator is looking to fund.) And it is entirely possible that tablets can become just as cumbersome in that regard.

If there's no reason PCs can't remove that crap, why haven't they?

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