I ask this out of genuine interest... why does it matter? Why’d it piss you off?

Not OP but, it's the classic Dunning-Kruger effect, they know so little about how to use a computer that they think that using a iPhone is a skill that is equivalent. This usually isn't a problem for most people but this person is in CS, where you would expect them to have at least passing knowledge in computers to join the major.

Again, why? FWIW I have a fancy degree in computer science and spent my childhood rebuilding and scraping together old 2/3/486 boxes. Yet I think it’s terrific that someone would be interested enough to enroll in a CS program without having wintel/Linux boxbuilding trivia knowledge.

The perception of what makes a viable CS major needs to evolve past what those born during the “Personal Computer” era think it should be.

I do agree with that and I have seen quite a few brilliant programmers be born in classes but there is a point where you start to expect them know some basic stuff like what a router, IDE and script are so that I don't have to explain them in full just to say how to make something work.

It is a computer, of a different design.

A jet fighter is a computer with wings. I don't think we should expect pilots to be computer literate the same way a software programmer needs to be.

Was correcting several statements that mobile devices aren’t computers. Lots of “computer knowledge” had to be aquired in the 90s due to the poor design of wintel boxes.