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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

>I just can't believe how horrible using a computer is for a non-poweruser.

I think it's more that computers have filesystems and a ton of other stuff--unrelated to crapware in many cases--that a lot of people don't understand, don't want to understand, and that a lot of people reading this are probably somewhat contemptuous of them not understanding. So they use phones that don't require them to understand any of that stuff and ask family/friends to help them when they get out of their very narrow comfort zone for some reason.

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> don't understand, don't want to understand

They're a threshold for when things are complicated and not wanting to understand something is fair. But as an adult, you very likely have a home with an address, which contains a room with a common name, which contains a folder, which contains your documents (birth certificate or something similar). That means you already understand filesystems. As a non-poweruser that's all there is to it - beyond that is just being uncomfortable with something you haven't encountered.

As someone who actually works with a lot of basic computer users, you are incorrect.

Nobody has ever struggled to understand files or folders. My 80 year old aunt has a preference for the names of her email folders. My 11 year old nephew has a sorting system for his little game mods.

No the main issue is exclusively "crap". To quote my mom on a recent call: "How do I make this thing go away?" (It was a notification about some new cloud service).

Breaking user patterns is a close second - especially anything to do with file management.

> Nobody has ever struggled to understand files or folders.

It sounds more like your family members have an aptitude for pragmatic organizational habits. This works for my parents but a common enough question from others is along the lines of "what do you mean where did I put it, I thought the computer was supposed to remember it?!" No amount of encouragement around the fact that they must have saved, likely named, and at least reopened a particular document dozens of times makes the concept stick in a satisfying way.

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