From the article: "It is a logging system, and it is used to record performance and debugging information by everything from the kernel upwards."

It's apparent that he did not do his homework. ETW is much closer to DTrace than to syslog (e.g., you can turn on and off certain events in a running application w/o disruption).

EDIT: It seems that the author uses ETW as an excuse for writing a rant about how an API should be designed according to his taste. Powerful, low-level APIs are difficult to use. Simple as that.