You don't want people to have to learn the difference between a browser and the web and a search engine and an operating system - you want things to just work.

You don't want people to have to learn the difference between a browser and the web and a search engine and an operating system - you want things to just work. Except that things still aren't at the "just work" stage, and perhaps never will be. People who are ignorant of cars or washing machines can nowadays use their cars and washing machines for years without running into any weird situation they don't know how to fix. But people who are ignorant of computers seem to wind up having weird problems they don't understand quite regularly. I'd say that's not a design issue, that's just to do with the fact that a computer is a more complex tool, with a much wider range of possible inputs, than a car is.