It served its purpose: It introduced millions of people to taking notes on a portable electronic device by making the use of the device familiar and welcoming.

Remember, this is at a time when people had to be taught how to "swipe to open," how to scroll on a touch screen, and how to pinch to zoom. All of this was unfamiliar territory to the masses.

If the iPhone's initial operating system looked like Android's current design, it would have been much harder to get people on board.

(I still have my launch day iPhone. I fired it up a couple of weeks ago, and aside from the horrible pre-retina screen resolution, it was very familiar and comforting.)

... as you walk along you path you meet a man. 50% if the time he tells you sage advice that makes you a multimillionaire and 50% of the time he tells you sage advice that doesn’t make you richer. What do you value the mans afvice as?

It’s not a cult or a conspiracy when what the other part is selling actually materializes.

I agree. My older relatives also have much harder times figuring out where to touch since the fully drawn buttons are replaced by just a text.

Is this objectively worse than the current practice of removing or hiding every visual cue and affordance, leaving the user to guess what they're supposed to be doing?

People were being introduced to wildly new concepts and it served to anchor people in familiarity.

Today, it's not as useful of an anchor for obvious reasons. Mobile phones and touch interfaces are ubiquitous.

I feel old, but honestly this was just, what? 10years ago?! does nobody remember how everyone in the entire mobile industry proclaimed Apple would fails because touch interfaces weren’t tactile. yet today every single phone is basically a copy of the first iPhone just with better chips and random stylistic touches to differenciate?