As a kid, the main thing that never occurred to me was 'why' - why were they holding this contest? Why offer this service for 'free'? Etc. Once I realized that generally businesses don't do things out of the goodness of their hearts, it was a lot easier to find the business reason and incentive behind their behavior.
The question is whether this can be taught without turning kids into cynics.
OneNote now shows the Copilot icon right where I start writing on a blank page. That's infuriating (as much as I see some uses for AI). Fortunately you can turn it off in the 'connected experiences' setting.
I think General Magic might've been onto something. From what I've seen, BOB looked so childish that it was likely insulting to adult users. General Magic had a crisper UI (partly because of the b/w nature of the devices) that felt more like the iconography of a late-80s copy machine.
I've got an old Sony Magic Link; one of the devices running the Magic Cap software. Both suffered from similar problems.
For starters the spacial interface is so cumbersome it makes all interactions with the system tedious. The first time you walk through the system it's cute but when you need to painstaking navigate to a particular room to do something it's just frustrating.
The hardware could not keep up with the demands of the interface. The PCs that shipped with Bob (in my experience) could not run it without paging and thus slowed to a crawl running it. Launching a program from Bob just resulted in interminable waits while the disk thrashed. The Magic Link is painfully slow and does not demonstrate the OS well at all.
Magic Cap was really no less insulting to users than Bob. It wasn't as cartoony but its tediousness wasted your time. The sluggishness of the hardware did not help. Even the early Newton MessagePads were snappier devices and their UI didn't make you tediously navigate through a virtual space.
Unfortunately, if you're willing to pay for an ad-free service, I suspect you're far more valuable to advertisers than any reasonable amount you could pay to be exempt.
Correct. A US google user's average value is $60 USD/month and ofcourse this is scaled up by those willing to pay who could be worth $200+ USD/month. (Napkin math)
Pic available at: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/817261/the-inventors