The single biggest point of confusion for newcomers to iOS in my experience is the dichotomy between the iTunes password and the device pass code and internalizing which is needed when.

The iTunes password is needed so rarely these days that most people really struggle to even remember setting it.

IMO, the iTunes password should be eliminated entirely. But I have no idea how to handle the activation lock situation if no authenticated device is on hand.

> IMO, the iTunes password should be eliminated entirely.

Whoa whoa whoa - hold on there. Your ‘iTunes password’ protects purchases in the App Store and iTunes media stores, access to the iCloud website, your iCloud email, iMessages, app data such as notes and contacts, third party app data, and freaking backups of your entire device.

What exactly would you suggest Apple do to eliminate that account? You might as well say that google should eliminate their gmail passwords, or that Dropbox should eliminate the account password.

Some of those could be handled by the device password (although apple might have dug themselves a hole with touch I'd there) - the other with an one time password generator whose secret was available to trusted ios devices? For Apple services, that might even be simplified to a callback system; mail app on desktop shows a token "bushy eyebrows", ios auth app display the token "busy eyebrows" and a login/cancel prompt. The actual auth can be done in a challenge - response fashion between the service and the ios device. Another use for the Apple watch...

Should just be handled by icloud instead of iTunes, even though these days it's the same thing

People with kids need two levels of access.

Lots of tools and apps require knowing passwords; my password manager just lets me press "Copy" when I open it to a particular login, and then I paste it into the iTunes prompt or elsewhere. A little extra hassle but I don't need to remember the password.

Thats what I do, but when you have a modal window like the one in the article, you cant get back to it if you hit cancel to open your password manager. I guess you could copy your password and hope it pops back up...

My personal password strategy requires that I do, in fact, have to recall from memory a small number of secure passwords (device access passwords, ssh key passwords, password manager password and one web service password (iCloud)).

My memorized password count is less than 10 and they're all long and secure (and completely different from one another). It's unfortunate that iCloud is on that list, but it's the only one that shouldn't really belong there, so I'm okay with it.