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My first memory with a computer was playing (more like trying to play) Microsoft flight simulator 1.0 on a Macintosh when I was around 8-9. The thing that looks like that:
I only started using Linux when installed dual boot Ubuntu on the family computer around 14-15.
Wow that is awesome! I have big nostalgia for the early B&W Macs as well, having played on a Mac Classic my uncle had when I was a kid. He actually gave me that computer years ago and it’s still in my basement collecting dust. I powered it up a few years ago and it still worked but then promptly powered it down and put it away. I need to go through it and recap it. Hopefully there aren’t any disastrous leaks.
Those beautiful graphics. That dithering though!
Bigger distinction: Kids with computers vs. kids with “smart” devices.
I feel that is the difference we're seeing though. Younger kids who generally live on smart devices have lower tech literacy.
She must have had a Mac. Only Windows teaches both the knowledge and the fury to convince children to switch to Linux.
Switching from apple is like breaking out of prison.
With iPhones yeah, but MacOS is not very locked down at all. You can run all the unsigned code you want.
Although you could argue the new Apple Silicon Macs are kind of locked down, since Apple only allows kernel extensions on the older Intel Macs
it's always puzzled me why Apple themselves call installing non approved software "jailbreaking", they're straight up stating that their os is a jail
Coming from windows it’s a breath of fresh air
For me as a user it always looked like Microsoft looks at how Apple does it and is eagerly employs the worst practices of not allowing the user to do anything 'forbidden' and not giving the user control in general.
Google is doing pretty much the same with Android for a long time, too.
Personally, I guess that you learn more the more issues you have. MacOS is a more closed down ecosystem compared to Windows, malware is less popular and as hardware comes usually bundled with the OS, you shouldn't encounter as many driver or hardware issues in general.
As a kid I had so much trouble with incompatible software, viruses, adware, drivers, broken hardware etc. And as I had noone to ask, it tought me a lot about the fundamentals of IT and how to research such issues myself.
Counterpoint, I grew up at a time when Mac's still couldn't do much outside of what apple specifically developed for them, so I learned a ton about emulation and virtual machines and such to play games or use Photoshop. I guess that supports your hypothesis, I can rock Unix command line stuff and containers like a pro, but hate figuring out drivers
And then there's 90s Linux because your parents got a used computer with a friend that came with only that and they didn't want to spend money buying windows 😢 it's like learning to swim by being yeeted into the ocean, with a couple sharks hanging around.
At least 80s kids got assembly.
Yes, I completely see that. This is not a black or white question. You can use Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, iOS... and learn close to nothing or you can geek around hour after hour to expand the boundaries of your device.
I would just assume, that you learn less if everything you want to do, works out of the box. And 'working out of the box' a typical selling point of the Apple ecosystem. Which of course doesn't mean that you can't have a steep learning curve. Your use cases obviously weren't delivered out of the box, so you had to get creative as well.
I had a jailbroken iPod Touch with a shell on it and spend hours and days overcoming system boundaries just out of spite. I also remember vividly trying to bring mobile games to a Symbian phone, tweaking around with a HP iPAQ on Windows Mobile, manually typing Midi ringtones with a text editor on a Nokia. :D
Where're all the DOS kids at?! 5 hours and 66 comments, but not a single mention yet.
Never mind solving problems with Windows; shit gets real when the thing boots to aC:\> prompt and you need to know things like the difference between CGA/EGA/VGA/Hercules graphics modes and WTF an IRQ is just to install your games in the first place.
“What is that high memory area stuff they added in DOS4?”
gets swallowed by rabbit hole for days
“Oh, that!”
Correlation does not imply causation though...
no, correlation equals funny
Indeed. It can hint towards more required research.
At risk of going off topic, I don’t like Twitter posts like this:
Both users ‘verified,’ essentially paying for more engagement, but with no actual “verification” like community mods tagging users.
In your face engagement metrics all over the posts, as if that’s all that matters. Not even a user “poll” like Lemmy/Reddit or Mastadon/Facebook.
Hiding most replies other than the most algorithmically engaging ones.
Posted as a screenshot, unfortunately necessary as they essentially broke Nitter and it’s nigh unusable unless logged in.
I don’t like that the Twitter format is kinda the center of the social media universe, and seemingly staying that way now that we basically voted to back it with the US govt.
Where does TRS-80 fit into this study?
I'm genuinely curious; is her hypothesis that macOS users are less tech literate? Because I definitely know much more computer science people that use macOS than Windows (of course most use Linux, but Windows is on third place).