And they were state-of-the-art until the late 1990s, when mass consumer mobile phones became a thing.

You can either be stubborn about tech, or adopt a grown-mindset and learn about new things.

Their generated developed this technology - it can't be beyond them to learn it?

> My mum's 1980s PSTN phone still works

Well it doesn't for much of society - that's the point.

My point is that, actually, no: nobody alive predates the popularisation of the telephone (the oldest person listed as being alive at the moment was born in 1904 – by which point there were ~3 m telephone subscribers in the US [1] https://www.technofunc.com/index.php/domain-knowledge/teleco...).

I think the point about being resistant to learning new skills is one thing, extreme poverty and the historically incredibly rapid widespread adoption of the smartphone is another. A smartphone from ten years ago is as good as useless for banking nowadays. If you're an 80 year old pensioner on a fixed income, it may well both be a significant proportion of your income, have taken a long time to learn to use and not exactly be understanding of your (statistically quite likely to be present) visual or fine manual dexterity difficulties, and I can very much imagine that you feel locked out of society for no good reason.

And, of course, it's trendy to keep "modernizing" UIs, so how to use it or any given app probably changes a fair bit every year or two.

I didn't claim that. I said it was the state-of-the-art until recently, and it was.

But I know what you mean.

(Except newer smart phones tend to have better support for accessibility as people realise it's more important.)

I am already dreading what fresh clever hell Apple is going to unleash upon her when she gets shoved off this one because enough “critical” apps won’t run on iOS 15 anymore.

My dad, early 70s, is still holding out with a flip phone (fortunately still available in 4G). His hands are quite useless on a touchscreen after 50+ years of concrete-oriented construction work, and I would LOVE to see Siri attempt to parse Deep East Texan.

Newer phones are better for accessibility if lower visual or aural capability or some types of movement capacity are your main limitations, but are worse for many others. Increasingly larger phones are an awful trend for my friend who has severe muscular dystrophy and limited strength and range of motion, and voice assistants are a cruel joke for her tiny little voice.

Yes, I've heard the exact same thing from my iPhone-using elderly mother and my sister. The answer is simple: stop spending thousands on new iPhones, and get an inexpensive budget-model Android instead. They're quite simple to use. But my suggestions always fall on deaf ears.

The landline is special because laws require a line-powered phone system that can survive outages. It's a minimal and reliable layer of infrastructure which still makes perfect sense for people with limited communications needs.

Is newer better? Should people be required to buy an array of fragile and expensive devices just to function? How many things should they be required to maintain and how complex should they be?

Back in the day, one would carry coins and use a phone box when needed. Nowadays everyone gets to carry a cellphone and pay 40 dollars minimum every month for the privilege. Cellphones are a regression, and we haven't even talked about the privacy aspect.

You can also dissent.

You can also resist.

And if newer is worse (for you), it's your obligation to do so.

Covered by ‘complaining’.

No, but we have to fill up those land fills and line those pockets somehow!

When the UI changes randomly at regular frequencies, what can you learn? There is no knowledge to accumulate.

Hell, even the thing where stuff sorts by "most recent access" makes learning impossible. How do you find older things? (the "search" function is contrary to how the brain works, brains are wired to find things by location which doesn't work if there isn't a location because stuff is always moved by the damn magic elves).

Tech companies have the same level of respect for their users as slaughterhouses do for cattle. We are living in The Jungle, except it’s techbro computer shit instead of meatpacking.

See: https://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/story/news/2022/05/23/je...

However I do not see anything resembling cell phone service happening until the 1970s.

Microsoft also licenses its operating system to third parties and you PCs can get updated by the end user without having to worry about the OEM. Microsoft Windows 7 which just went out of support in 2020 ran on my 2006 era Mac.

As far as phones, Apple released a security patch for the 2013 iPhone 5s less than four months ago.

https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/coh-phone...

1 in 20 households lacked a phone in 1990, 1 in 5 in 1960, and those number his regional variations.

My ex (and still one of my best friends!) was (is?) a first responder for the Pacific North-West (think oil-spills on mountains and other ecological problems). She was required to have a land-line. It was great that it would forward to a mobile, and lacking that, dump back to a battery-backed-up voice mail unit on-premises (possibly more).

OT: Her position seemed unique to me -- working for <whatever> $company, she would get alerted/activated for things in the Canada AND the U.S. And they would do the thing of "Where are You? ....... There's a heliport at X - we'll have a 'copter there in 15 minutes" and then I get to send her away clutch when I got home.