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[fyoder]

Don't even begin to ask me what kind of hardware was inside that Mac Classic, or how System-Six-Point-Whatever actually WORKED.  The Macintosh's claim to fame has always been that it brought computers to a wider user-base because it did so much of the work for you, and you didn't have to learn what was going on in the background.

I had a similar early background to you, but I went from C64 to Apple //e to Atari 1040ST to PC running Windows 3.1, and of the lot, it was the Windows PC which required a lot of learning, not only messing with autoexec.bat and other config files so some game would run right, but wrestling with interupt conflicts between things like modem, sound, and video cards and such.  At the time I thought Mac users were pretty clueless, but as you point out, they didn't have the same incentive to be clueful.  Then Win95 came along, and Win98, and PCI, to the point where today Windows users don't have to be that bright either, provided they have powerful processors and scads of RAM.  Though they do still need to know a little about firewalls, if only that they need them. 

That left the Linux users as the 'smart' computer users, but that will change with distros like Ubuntu which are so easy to learn.  I switched about 8 or 9 years ago I guess, and it was a good time to switch learning wise, because installers had come far enough along that you could probably install Linux yourself if you were diligent, but you would still have to learn a ton to get it all working properly. 

I agree that childhood is the best time to pick this stuff up.  However, there are a lot of adults on these forums learning a lot too!  It takes me back to when I was learning Linux.  They wouldn't have this experience if they installed ubuntu on a modern desktop and used gnome or kde as their desktop environment.  The xo may be a covert plot to take regular human beings and, without them even being aware, turn them into hackers!