Agree. And along the same lines an entire industry grew around the fact that computing products before Apple (particularly DOS, Windows etc.) were difficult enough that the average person (say someone who might be urged to code now) did not have the desire or aptitude to learn how to do it themselves. I'm sure everyone knows many of these people who giggle about how stupid they are with computers and have no interest in learning how to fix the simplest of problems.
Some people just lack the appropriate base skills to fool with computers and certainly programming. They will always need a "tech guy" and have no desire to change that for a reason. It's not that simple to them. Not because they are stupid but because it's not their thing.
>I vehemently disagree on this. Apple has made a silly fortune proving the contrary.
Totally orthogonal.
Apple cares about UI and attractive industrial design, and was the first companies to really get that in the computer space (and later in the MP3, smart phone, and tablet spaces). Good UI design is good for experts and novices alike. Do you really think that most people who used DOS computers once upon a time would really want to go back to 100% command-line interactions? (Yes, I know there are exceptions in the Unix crowd who swear that vi IS sliced bread and that anything not on the command line sucks...but there are probably 10x as many "expert" developers who swear by GUIs. Can't please everyone.)
The key difference is that, if you shy away from programming, there are huge categories of things you will never be able to do. And until you know how to program, you won't even know what those things are.
The "learning to read" analogy (elsewhere in this thread) is good. It's a powerful skill that, until you know it, you don't even know what it is you're missing.
I like some of Apple's products. I don't disagree that design is important and that the interface should hide the complexity where the complexity is meaningless to the use experience.
However, that has nothing to do with the point I was making.
I vehemently disagree on this. Apple has made a silly fortune proving the contrary.
If you need deep understanding of a device to make it useful then the designers have failed to provide you with the right abstractions.