He's become so disillusioned with modern word processing that he uses a typewriter.
It made him such a fan of typewriters that he has an app called Hanx Writer to simulate various typewriters on iOS devices.
At this point, Microsoft Word is so geared toward writing inter-office memos that I feel bad for anyone who wants to do any serious writing on it.
That’s why Outlook and Excel are almost operating systems and Word meanders around with no real focus. It is not an opinionated app.
Changes in Word are driven by awful end user communities like attorneys. Attorneys are smart people, but the influential ones have doctor egos, get set in their ways, and spend their day interacting with fossilized bureaucracies, as demonstrated by the fact that people are still screwing around with WordPerfect 5 for DOS in 2020.
The excuses given (ie “Federal court filings are finicky”) are 100% bullshit. The reality is the chief poobah of counsel likes WordPerfect because he’s the chief poohbah, and his minions get to suck it up and learn how to use an application released when they were in diapers.
Attorneys are usually people who went to three years of law school and then passed the bar exam. Possibly many years ago. I have found that their most distinguishing characteristic is that they didn't quit law school.
They tend to be smart in the exact same ratio as any other college graduate. That is to say, some attorneys are smart.
I wrote most of a novella in the iOS version of Word last year for NaNoWriMo, mostly because I really liked Word's OneDrive-based sync to make sure I was always up to date no matter which device I used and that I could reasonably trust offline sync in the rare cases where I worked on the document on multiple devices "in parallel" because one was offline. The iOS version defaults to "Focus Mode" and that eventually pushed me to figuring out how to get the right "Focus Mode" settings on my desktop to get a similar writing experience, which turned out to be easy when you knew what you were looking for.
I think it's all another reminder that it isn't necessarily your tools, but how you use them and how familiar you are with them. In a nutshell that is most of the discussions here, use what you like and if a 30+ year old word processing tool meets your needs, wonderful. On the flipside, the modern tools aren't without their merits and there are similar familiarity tricks to using them that maybe just take a bit a seeking them out or learning them.
The Selectric II is such a joy to type on. Unlike Hanks, I use corrective tape, though. He mashes 'x' through any typos.
I forgot how nice it is to get mail that isn't a bill or an ad.
Now she writes to her friends all over the world. And since it's paper mail that takes between three days and two weeks to arrive, there's no posturing. No boasting. No one-upsmanship. It's people really writing about things that are actually important to them because it takes effort.
Letter writing / penpal'ing is really magical -- specifically for the reasons you noted. Even with friends I speak with (digitally or in person) on a regular basis have plenty to talk about in a letter.
I hadn't purchased a stamp for years. Its remarkable that sending a letter domestically can be done for around a dollar.