You have to remember, the horse and buggy had been tested through time and was "good enough". Sticking to land was "good enough" when the airplane was developed. It was perfectly fine living without it when air conditioning was created. Your "good enough" isn't nearly good enough for all. Things change, new technologies are developed and old ones evolve.

In the example you gave, an equivalent scenario on the kids side of things would be replacing the work he does with utilizing a robot to fold and put away his clean clothing so when you'd ask where he puts his clean clothes, the best he could say is he gave them to the clothes thing. While it's not exactly the same as clothing is physical and files are not (strictly speaking), when you ask where he puts his files, his best answer in the way that he knows how is "I have no idea, I gave them to the files thing" whether it be music, documents, photos, etc.

That must be a nightmare when it comes time for auditing data or in the case of a legal issue.

Is this why the Registry in Windows is so "organized" all the time?

Unfortunately, Apple would find some way to require you to use iTunes even for wireless transfer of data to/from your computer. Samsung as well since they love to copy Apple.

As someone who has been on multiple Discord "servers", where exactly are these experts? I've seen shit-posts, personal attacks and stickers galore but Experts? None to be found. On forums, IRC, Matrix and other services I've seen actual experts posting answers, sometimes by giving links to old answers and information from Forums, old web pages, Wiki pages, etc. On Discord? You'll tend to be made fun of for trying to do anything useful.

Audacity isn't a web browser and has zero need to collect age of user (how else do you think they'll know who's under 13 and using their software?), IP address or any information needed to send to the authorities. When installed via repository, it doesn't even need to know OS version or type as that's handled by the package maintainers. If I want to use an audio editor to increase the volume, merge audio clips, etc. why should they need to know anything at all except when their application crashes and even then, only if I OPT IN?

As someone who is Tech Support for a corporation, treating some users like children is necessary, treating others like adults is also necessary. Some users need their hand held and some need a kick in the pants while others are more autonomous and able to handle their own issues. Should this be a reason to make it 100% impossible for anyone to do anything at all without me because "it's for their protection"? No, no it shouldn't. I've had the "privilege" of supporting quite a large number of iPhones and iPads and I can say with certainty the only thing Apple does to protect the user is make life so miserable that the user doesn't even want to attempt actually using their phone. How? I've had a large number of users report a phone that has "magically" reset to factory settings, lost the ability to check email, lost the ability to, well, do anything including holding a charge in its own battery. There's also the issue of using a non-standard format for photos, tying your SMS directly into iMessage so a migration to a more sane alternative just isn't feasible, not allowing you to flash your own phone using any software other than the monolith of iTunes, not giving you access to your files other than those non-standard photos by plugging your phone directly to your laptop, etc. I also support several Android users as well. Guess who doesn't reach out for support as they don't need it. Apples insistence that they know best about everything is so easily disproven by anyone who actually has to support these devices it's not funny.