Macro comments that his grandparents don't want/shouldn't have to spend time dicking around with apple IDs. No one should have to. It's awful. Email, music sharing, itunes match, App Store, iMessage, FaceTime, iCloud, notes, and likely others. Getting an iOS device or mac to have fully functioning services usually takes me weeks to achieve (oh, that email account isn't arriving for some reason) as random things that worked just seem to stop working when peculiarities of personal account functionality are encountered. Why on earth the initial setup can't have an initial chance to enter apple I'd one, then a list of services to turn on.
And if for some reason a password reset has to happen it's just terrible trying to get all the devices in the house working again (don't lose Apple TV remote...) is hours of work, and is so bad the password changes are a killer. Please Apple, save us, I'm more than 50 years younger and I don't want this either.
Initial setup does ask for an Apple ID, then sets up most associated services (App Store, iMessage, FaceTime, iCloud, Notes, etc). They fixed that with iOS 6, and no 'random things that worked' broke when I upgraded. I don't use iCloud email so I can't speak to that.
That's my main gripe, if you have multiple email addresses that feed into one account, and like to email out from a variety of addresses its ugly. Really really ugly. Mainly because iCloud hates you sending a message that doesn't appear as an apple address.
If IOS 6 is better than 5 in regard to initial Apple ID I couldnt really judge as most my settings carried over from my ios5 install, thankfully, but iTunes Match lost its setup, and home sharing too and the remote app is now broken for me on iPhone.
However if setting up a new device has been improved/fixed. THANK YOU.