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For instance, one study subject took twenty minutes of staring at a Windows 3.1 desktop before being able to open a text editing program. Finally, a programmer spoke up that this was unacceptable, to Oran’s relief. But that relief would be short lived: “Our customers are morons!” exclaimed the programmer.
This was frustrating enough, Oran says. But then they talked to that user, and it turns out that he was actually a propulsion engineer for Boeing.
“He was literally a rocket scientist,” Oran says. “And even he couldn’t figure out Windows.”
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IMO the #1 opportunity for open source software to gain more mainstream acceptance is focusing on making it easier for non-technical users to use. Which is hard when most of your userbase is technical users. Microsoft deserves credit for realizing they had a usability problem, and having made major improvements to that over the years.