Okay, clean a 16000 email backlog on a phone.

On her phone.

Without her computer logged into her email.

Without her phone.

"I can do this for you, but I will need to use your computer to do it, and I will need you to read me off a bunch of 2FA codes in all likelihood, so you can either give me your phone or you can sit next to me while I do it. Oh, and they're your emails, so you may as well pull up a chair or I'm just going to have to guess whether you care or not."

My time is valuable too. You want me to do it, you help.

Can confirm this is an absolutely terrible thing to do on the phone unless you use the web UI and know how to create filters/rules

How is he able to help more other than telling the truth that phones and tablets can't do what she needs?

Especially in this department, where limitations are very much fixed. Even if he wants it to work on a phone, he cannot make it do certain things if the OS doesn’t intend it to be possible. If she were trying to do things on Linux, at least you could accuse him of being too lazy to write custom software to do it. Not true on closed platforms though.

> too lazy to write custom software to do it

Hell, I’m not a coder; I don’t even work in IT. I can install Linux and configure it reasonably well for an end user, but ask me to code something up and… well, hope you like Claude’s output.

Her desktop is a 27” iMac that’s too old for OCLP to help keep it going, and I keep thinking about putting Linux on it, but I can’t imagine trying to get her onto something that isn’t either Windows (used at work) or macOS (we have full Apple ecosystem at home and her laptop is an M2 MBA) until it just won’t run Citrix and a browser capable of hitting Gmail. Or until Apple finally makes another 27” iMac, which given the RAM and storage situation isn’t happening any time soon.

Sometimes, "use a different tool" is in fact the correct and most helpful answer. If someone comes to me asking why they are having such a hard time pounding in nails, and I see they are using the handle of their screwdriver, I'm not going to give them tips on how to hold the screwdriver better, I'm going to say "dude use a hammer, you'll be much better off".