I'm not defending Apple, but tech-oriented users have always been pushing for more features.
The question is should there be a middle ground between keeping the product trivially simple, or cramming an increasing amount of features to satisfy power users. Either extreme works well for a specific subset of Apple's user base; a middle ground is more prone to leaving everybody confused and/or unsatisfied.
I have zero UI design experience so can't really chime in. Maybe a toggle option inside a menu that swaps app modes? Leave it off and you have a very basic Notes app; toggle it and you get all the bells and whistles, tags, folders, parsing... But this totally causes the problem you describe in your last paragraph.
Many UIs today are objectively bad and unintuitive (like the Gmail example in the article). UIs should always strive to eliminate the "don't know what you don't know" quadrant: common sense should be enough to navigate the system safely. Perfect examples are the Gmail example in the article, or the "hanging up the phone doesn't hang up the phone" problem of landlines[0] where you can do "everything right" and still get scammed. The judgment metric here is whether a decently intelligent people could fall victims to these; they can, so they're objectively bad UIs. They violate common sense.
Then there's another group, that severely struggles with computing abstractions. (These can be perfectly smart people in other areas). They can have slightly degraded motor skills and end up swiping or tapping inadvertently and getting lost. The kind of people that thinks a locked phone is "turned off". That get confused when Control Center or Notification Center show up, because the swipe was inadvertent and they don't understand the abstraction ("where did my video go?").
It is utterly impossible to design the same UI for this group of people and for everyone else. For them, you'd ideally permanently dedicate a fifth of the screen to a never-changing menu, with common operations (copy, paste, switch app, see notifications, check email, find app). For most people, menu bars would be terrible on phones and tablets since they'd need to be always visible, and big enough to be tappable, and would waste collosal screen space; but some people would prefer that.
The UI would need to have a permanent banner that explicitly labels the UI context, essentially a "permanent tutorial mode" that explains computing abstractions, for example with a banner that says "YOU ARE CURRENTLY VIEWING RECENT NOTIFICATIONS. [GO BACK]" (otherwise, you get inadvertent swipes, and "hey, where'd my video go!").
Designing "one UI for everybody" is hopeless. This is an obvious accessibility issue; and I don't understand why no company is building optional "tutorial modes" into their UIs since I'd assume the amount of people struggling with computers is a lot higher than the amount of blind or paralyzed people.
On iOS you can change app settings outside of the app itself. Why not default to simple, and allow technical users to enable the more complex features they want by going through the Settings app?
Agreed, but I think the analogy should follow the pencil, not the person. This seems to shift focus towards that someone who made the $10m. What does the buyer who just spent $10m do with the pencil? Do they hoard it as a trophy, or does it become a tool that provides some value to society?
Dangerous <everything> must be removed from roads. There is a non-negligible amount of bikers skipping red lights, or using the sidewalk (forbidden in many cities), or even going the opposite way on one-way streets. The rationale in most cases is that a bike is not a motor vehicle and thus should not observe the same rules. This is a problem even in a scenario without cars, as it leads to collision vs. other bicyclists or pedestrians.
This behaviour from a few individuals pushes anti-bikers to protest even more, making it harder for these initiatives to thrive.
As ridiculous as it sounds, a deterrent similar to a license plate may become a necessity.
Not to say that behavior is okay but you're comparing apples and oranges. Drivers kill tens of thousands of people a year. Bikes are responsible for <1 person a year on average. People citing misbehavior by some cyclists need to get some perspective.
Meanwhile, the driver who hit me (in a bike lane) defended himself to the cop by saying "it's hard to not hit bikers". He was not even given a warning. I had video evidence from a helmetcam.
Social interaction in one's free time is a matter of preference - you can stay home alone, or ring up a friend and go for a coffee.
Maybe eventually people can find a group of friends/acquaintances with which they can also hang out and have a coffee, while each tends to their own work?
The question is should there be a middle ground between keeping the product trivially simple, or cramming an increasing amount of features to satisfy power users. Either extreme works well for a specific subset of Apple's user base; a middle ground is more prone to leaving everybody confused and/or unsatisfied.
I have zero UI design experience so can't really chime in. Maybe a toggle option inside a menu that swaps app modes? Leave it off and you have a very basic Notes app; toggle it and you get all the bells and whistles, tags, folders, parsing... But this totally causes the problem you describe in your last paragraph.