That's not how people's brains work. When Mom first sees a smartphone, it's a cool new thing. Yeah, there's a learning curve, but it's new, so that's obvious. She'll deal.
Fast forward three years. Mom has developed a lot of habits and expectations. Time for a new smartphone. When Mom buys a new smartphone, if it works differently than the one she had before, it is confusing and you just can't do anything with this piece of crap and why oh WHY can't it just be like her old one?
And asking people to just throw away everything they own and buy it all again? Not only should that extra cost factor into your decision, there's a wealth of evidence that people irrationally weigh sunk costs more heavily than they should.
I do not find the Mom argument particularly compelling. Humans are some of the best things at learning on the planet.
(From reading HN, I'm starting to believe that I must be one of the blessed few with a Mom who is not a complete jackass).
If she wants to switch (and she will if she can no longer get the things that she wants), it will get bitched about for 2 weeks, then she will figure it out and you'll never hear about it again. This is some sort of squeaky wheel confirmation bias.
This is not about my mom, who is in fact a pretty plucky lady when it comes to technology, and I don't think it's confirmation bias. I'm speaking from my experience supporting lots of people who fit the general archetype of the Mom who had never used Macs at a job before.
In my experience, it takes more than two weeks before they stop missing the other way of doing things. The violation of their expectations bothers them to such a degree that it interrupts the part of their brain that would otherwise help them learn the system. They might learn eventually, but they will have to be dragged there kicking and screaming.
Fast forward three years. Mom has developed a lot of habits and expectations. Time for a new smartphone. When Mom buys a new smartphone, if it works differently than the one she had before, it is confusing and you just can't do anything with this piece of crap and why oh WHY can't it just be like her old one?
And asking people to just throw away everything they own and buy it all again? Not only should that extra cost factor into your decision, there's a wealth of evidence that people irrationally weigh sunk costs more heavily than they should.