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3 days agoCan’t speak for the under 50 crowd, but from what I’ve dealt with, people don’t buy apples because they’re cheap. Usually it’s down to getting fed up all to hell with Microsoft and wanting to try something with a friendlier user experience. for the last 20 years (at least) when I was doing housecalls to help people with their systems - it’s almost always been seniors with macs… and the number one gripe WRT printer setups almost always involved HP.
I’m still rolling with 2008 to 2010 era Macs so when these old tanks finally can’t be updated with the unsupported installs, I’ll be switching to linux of some sort.
Ehh. My dad had been using Windows from when 3.1 came out until Windows 8 and that Metro UI stopped him in his tracks. Had to reinstall Win 7 so he could use it but it really did deflate him.
Thing is, older users whose memory starts to go - it’s absolutely critical that as little as possible changes with a new OS.
I was so furious with MS that he lost the ability to use his computer because of that change. He finally found someone to help him roll back to the older OS, but then it presented itself with a whole new set of problems, mainly the browsers stopped working and of course security.
He was well into starting to fail from cancer, so he was having memory problems when he got one of those scam calls from “Microsoft Windows” that locked him out of his computer and ransomed access for 300 bucks - which he didn’t have.
Was in a nursing home by then.
I sent him a dell Core 2 duo laptop with his copy of Win 7 installed and a bunch of videos to watch (he loved Game of Thrones) but he was too sick by then.
Years later, one of my oldest clients (93 y/o - quite literally) got almost shut down when her system updated from Win 10 to Windows 11. Just the simple change of moving the icons on the taskbar stopped her in her tracks. I had to go set it up with the older left-justified icons she was used to.
When you get to dealing with older people who are starting to mentally slow down, you really see that consistency in the UI becomes an absolute necessity.
The fact that MS doesn’t even give that option on an update - to see the personalization settings of the older OS and to honor them… is really blind to the needs of older users. It’s shitty… it’s ageist.
Apple has been fairly consistent with things like updating an OS will carry ALL the desktop settings - even icon locations on the Desktop, into the newer system. And it’s identical other than a new tint of gray or a radius of a curve on the corner of the windows. (I think it’s been boring as hell, but I’ve always reached to theme or skin the OS to my tastes.)
NGL, I use Win 10 Pro on my gaming PC and as someone that came from Dos-5.0/Windows 3.1.1 and also Geoworks but first used an Apple ][e, yeah, they’re pretty much the same but with different window dressing.
I’m going to leap into Bazzite for the gaming PC once I get more SSDs. Can’t even fnd the HDDs I want for storage of the game installers I have. So I wait.