Microsoft programmers spent an absurd amount of time tweaking the default double-click speed of the mouse in early Windows versions to accommodate older users whose declining motor skills made rapid clicking difficult.

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Microsoft programmers spent an absurd amount of time tweaking the default double-click speed of the mouse in early Windows versions to accommodate older users whose declining motor skills made rapid clicking difficult. They discovered that if the time threshold between clicks was too long, users would accidentally open multiple files while just trying to select them, but if it was too short, their grandparents could literally never launch Solitaire. The exact millisecond gap you use today is the direct result of exhausted software engineers running endless usability tests on confused elderly people in the 1990s. Every time you rapidly launch an application, you are standing on the shoulders of frustrated boomers who just wanted to view a low-resolution photo of their grandchildren