Maybe I'm just being obtuse, but what exactly is his point? Since he's a developer, I can't imagine that a couple minutes on the web wouldn't net him a solution that'd work for his friend's father.

Maybe it's just me, but I receive very high utility knowing that I help solve someone's problem which maximizes their utility as opposed to throwing my hands in the air because said solution may not agree with my own tastes.

So why can't his friends father spend a couple minutes on the web to find a solution himself? Look, I know about computers, but I don't use Outlook or Android (which seems to be Arment's situation) so rather that wasting a couple of hours of both our lives, I'd tell the truth and say "I don't know about $SOFTWARE. Have you Googled it?" This does lead to another issue; most people don't know how to search. I have found that a quick Google tutorial is far more fruitful than a couple of hours spent trying to understand the individual workflow requirements and offer a fix around that; often having to use products and solutions that I know nothing about because that is what they use. "Give a man a net to fish with and he can feed himself." no pun intended.