You have to remember that when Clippy was introduced with Office 97 in Nov. 1996 a lot of people were coming to a PC from a DOS era or older machine, typewriter, or nothing at all. Anthropomorphic assistants were all the rage to teach people how to use a GUI for the first time. Admittedly Microsoft took things too far. But for a lot of people who didn’t know the wizards were there the assistants were genuinely helpful.
Um, what universe did you slide in from where this is true?
You have to remember that when Clippy was introduced with Office 97 in Nov. 1996 a lot of people were coming to a PC from a DOS era or older machine, typewriter, or nothing at all. Anthropomorphic assistants were all the rage to teach people how to use a GUI for the first time. Admittedly Microsoft took things too far. But for a lot of people who didn’t know the wizards were there the assistants were genuinely helpful.