A few years ago, I got tired of fielding support requests from family members and started making them an offer instead. I began telling them that if they would buy a Mac, I would give them 24/7 tech support without complaint. Initially, they scoffed, but as the Mac became fashionable, I had more and more family members calling to let me know they had switched. Now, most of them are Mac users and the rate of support calls have dropped from several a month to several a year. These days, tech support calls involve questions of how to do stuff these folks like to do. Because they can now actually use their computers instead of simply restarting them, I’m able to better see how they use them. And the one commonality I’ve seen is that no one knows how to use the file system.
