Apple is great at UX, the person you responded to didn't say otherwise. What they aren't great at is empowering the subset of their users who want to use the machine on their own terms.

Instead, Apple shoehorns whatever they think is the right thing. The headphone jack is one example, the buy vs bring your own music is another. They do this because of both UX concerns and business reasons. But that's not all that matters, as Tim Cook just said, which is ironic.