This article popped up on my home screen this morning: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/27/gen-z-tech-shame-office-technology-printers and it clicked with something that has been in my head for a long time now (perhaps even inspired by a reply to something on here, or it could have been somewhere else)
I was born at the end of '86, that I think makes me a Millennial I think, and in a way that will liklely be typical for most users on here, I was brought up using computers, I remember using windows 3.11 on a 486DX, and later windows 95. I remember Risc Os onn acorn machines at school (BBC micros were kind of on the way out by them, but there were still some around) While I've never been one to keep up with the absolute leading edge, I have always through the years built and upgraded PCs myself, and normally managed to understand enough about them to sort issues out by myself, could navigate MS DOS, I have a rapberry pi, I've written code (albeit probably pretty bad code!) in vb.net and php. So all in all, I'd like to think I'm quite good with computers.
Heres my confession, I struggle with phones, stuff doesn't seem intruative, each app seems to abide by completely different UI rules, nothing seems to behave in a standard-ised way. The other thing is, that it seems to be like to hide a lot of what its doing away from you... ok, this apopplication has stuffed up, how do I stop it, doesn't seem easy, how do I uninstall it?, again not straightfordward, where is it installed , arguably probably don't need to know, but thats just as well, because you can't! As for serious work, a Laptop is a minimu, ideally if I am doing anything more than a word document, I need a desk and a machine with at least two screens, I had a similar conversion with a colleague and he told me his daughter came to him having trouble getting a CV she had created properly to print, she had done it on a phone (the concept of that is just so bizzare to me)
So I feel about twenty years older when I'm struggling to make my phone work for me (which is about what my colleague has on me), and I am guessing, as the article alludes to, more and more younger workers are the otherway around, they can navigate the strange environment of phones, but a proper PC and general office equipment is difficult for them. The worst thing is, that I feel other things going the same way, The app store in windows for instance, you download something in there, ok where has it installed it, oh it hasn't as such, there is no exe, its like a runtime environment that half baked apps run in, it took me half an hour to put a shortcut to the new whatsapp desktop client on my desktop (it had created one in my start menu but I use program called fences that creates groups on my desktop I can put shortcuts to) and applications that run inside a brower, SAS type things, with all the processing done in the cloud, we again have unstandardised UIs with elements not behaving as you'd expect they ought to)
Anyone else the same?
Adam
I was born at the end of '86, that I think makes me a Millennial I think, and in a way that will liklely be typical for most users on here, I was brought up using computers, I remember using windows 3.11 on a 486DX, and later windows 95. I remember Risc Os onn acorn machines at school (BBC micros were kind of on the way out by them, but there were still some around) While I've never been one to keep up with the absolute leading edge, I have always through the years built and upgraded PCs myself, and normally managed to understand enough about them to sort issues out by myself, could navigate MS DOS, I have a rapberry pi, I've written code (albeit probably pretty bad code!) in vb.net and php. So all in all, I'd like to think I'm quite good with computers.
Heres my confession, I struggle with phones, stuff doesn't seem intruative, each app seems to abide by completely different UI rules, nothing seems to behave in a standard-ised way. The other thing is, that it seems to be like to hide a lot of what its doing away from you... ok, this apopplication has stuffed up, how do I stop it, doesn't seem easy, how do I uninstall it?, again not straightfordward, where is it installed , arguably probably don't need to know, but thats just as well, because you can't! As for serious work, a Laptop is a minimu, ideally if I am doing anything more than a word document, I need a desk and a machine with at least two screens, I had a similar conversion with a colleague and he told me his daughter came to him having trouble getting a CV she had created properly to print, she had done it on a phone (the concept of that is just so bizzare to me)
So I feel about twenty years older when I'm struggling to make my phone work for me (which is about what my colleague has on me), and I am guessing, as the article alludes to, more and more younger workers are the otherway around, they can navigate the strange environment of phones, but a proper PC and general office equipment is difficult for them. The worst thing is, that I feel other things going the same way, The app store in windows for instance, you download something in there, ok where has it installed it, oh it hasn't as such, there is no exe, its like a runtime environment that half baked apps run in, it took me half an hour to put a shortcut to the new whatsapp desktop client on my desktop (it had created one in my start menu but I use program called fences that creates groups on my desktop I can put shortcuts to) and applications that run inside a brower, SAS type things, with all the processing done in the cloud, we again have unstandardised UIs with elements not behaving as you'd expect they ought to)
Anyone else the same?
Adam
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On the flip side I’m entirely comfortable with phones etc as I would imagine anyone under 40 should be 
My grandparents weren't great with the VCR, Freeview, etc.
