It’s funny, my father was quite dismissive of GUIs. He thought they were just toys, I don’t think he even used Windows until he was forced to around ‘98.
(the iPhone transformed him into the biggest Apple fan on the planet, somehow)
I remember the transition to GUIs and, although they looked nice, they didn't feel so productive. By the time the GUI had started up and you had found what you were looking for, you'd have been well into your task on DOS and Wordstar or Turbo C or whatever.
The very first GUI I ever used was a thing called Fleet Street Editor on a BBC Micro. It was slow, but since the task at hand was about graphics, it made sense to use it. All other things you could do on a micro were a lot faster on the CLI.
It's interesting that this is always the shot against Apple, in every generation.
And I'm not judging, I was myself like this since a young geek in the 90s to a greybeard in the early 2010s, before something finally clicked in my head.
While us geeks were criticizing the productivity/effectiveness of the Mac, the iMac, the iPhone (and presumably soon the VisionPro), Apple was casually changing computing for everyone (literally for all of humanity) and forever.
I had no idea how patient and prescient he was about how the various pieces of technology Apple was working on would change the world. How revolutionary something like iTunes truly was.
The intersection of technology, usability, and BUSINESS (Only Nixon could've gone to China; Only Jobs could've convinced the Music Industry to digitize all their music to sell on iTunes) is truly astounding.
In our industry of frivolously inflated startup unicorns, it somehow seems just that Apple is the most valuable company in the world. And I say that as someone who spent most of my career criticizing them.
In my view there's nothing wrong with acknowledging the innovations of Apple, while strategically refraining from being an early adopter.
I got my first computer in 1983, and eventually got a Mac, when the "affordable" ones came out in the early 1990s. I don't think I'm dumber, or less successful for having waited that long.
I was too. I often referred to them as point and grunt. I stuck with DOS plus DesqView (no mouse) until I started using OS/2 around 1994 or so. Having multiple windows was fine, but I preferred the command line. I kind of still do.
(the iPhone transformed him into the biggest Apple fan on the planet, somehow)