Yeah, by design, of course, but I still think it's bad (& there are plenty of ways to scare grandma without lying to her, if you really need to do that).

In general I'd contend that the mindest which leads you to believe "we need to lie to our users because they are dumb" isn't conducive to making good software.

Lying to people is usually bad because they will stop trusting your warnings.

Part of the reason computer users like your grandma are so helpless is because OS' have devolved to be completely untrustworthy. Everything lies, and error messages now look like "oopsy windows made a fucky! >_<"

It's no wonder granny has zero confidence in the computer and is always behind.