Back when there were RS232 (aka 9 pin) connectors on PCs, my dad's computer had two mail connectors, one CGA and one serial port (I think it was a serial port, but I'm not sure, as those connectors were usually female). I took the VGA cable and accidentally plugged it into the serial port. When I turned on the computer, I heard the startup chirping noises, the screen was black for a few seconds, and then white smoke started pouring out of the power supply. I turned it off REAL fast :) Somehow the computer still worked after that.
EDIT: changed VGA to CGA
I don't see how that's possible without really crushing it in there. Also, CGA & EGA were the same connector as serial (DE-9), which would've been easier to confuse.
It could've been worse: I knew a guy in high-school who plugged a parallel printer into a Mac classic's SCSI DB-25 (the same physical connector as a parallel port, female on the computer; DB-25 serial is a male connector on a PC) and baked it into "apple pie" with that "lovely" magic smoke aroma.
My 84 yo mother was technically competent. Currently has mid-stage dementia. Long term recall still remains impressive. Apparently unable to learn new skills, habits.
Every software update is cleaving a few more things from her life.
My siblings and I thought upgrading her to an iPhone was a good idea, some years ago. Initially, sure. But now I wish we had a snapshot of her tech stack from her early 70s, and found a way to keep that working.
It would've been impossible to do this with commercial software as basically nothing has a 25+ year old support life. Because everything is open source, nothing needs to change.
The gesture controls Apple implemented starting with the iPhone X are also very confusing for an Android user, eve though I also use gesture controls on my S10.
But in the end, you'd get used to it as you did with Android.
Same with the people I help technically at work. They're all brilliant scientists. They get confused by the difference between VGA, DisplayPort, HDMI, and DVI. Or get extremely frustrated when a button on the UI moves.
I think software developers don't quite understand how big a deal it is to a 70 year old when the button to do something moves. Probably a quarter of my day is often just figuring out how to reconfigure things to their liking or else spend an hour retraining them because of some unnecessary UI change in Windows 10, after which they will still forget and ask for help again.
God forbid you break apart an application into multiple programs or have online activation or a license server. I think I hear at least a daily rant about how you can't just buy software anymore and now you can only rent it for a bit.
We have versions of software that are 13 years old because the publisher switched from an unlimited permanent license to a per-seat per-year license model. Rarely worth it when the instructors get confused by new software anyway.