I hate this "your mother can't..." ageist and sexist bullshit. Maybe your mother can't. Nobody tells my mother (who is now also a grandmother) what she can and can't do.
Honestly, lots of people were able to figure those devices out. People aren't really as stupid as programmers make them out to be. But coddle them and keep beating them over the head with this and they likely just give up from being treated like shit.
It’s a manner of speaking, don’t get so woke on me now. Many people can’t figure out tech. Here comes another cliche, have you ever been the IT guy for everyone around you? Why was that? We really didn’t take User Experience seriously until about the iPhone/Apps age. That’s when people didn’t need handholding, the apps were designed well.
At best, this is ignorance. At worst, it's willful revisionism. It was the iPhone apps that drove setting HCI back almost 2 decades. Hiding functionality behind skeumorphisms, coupling file access to apps, tiny screens, reinventing the accessibility wheel. Both Apple and Microsoft had very well-regarded UI design guidelines that, if followed, made apps that afforded the same metaphors as all the other apps on the system. Then one day the tech industry decided to throw it all away in the name of graphic design and branding, not usability.
Honestly, lots of people were able to figure those devices out. People aren't really as stupid as programmers make them out to be. But coddle them and keep beating them over the head with this and they likely just give up from being treated like shit.