Swiping isn't even a great gesture for most uses. Earlier today, I had to delete maybe 50-100 downloaded podcasts from the Podcasts app (there is seemingly no way to do this en masse). The quickest way to do so is with repeated swipes, but it's almost impossible to be consistent with your swipes over 50-100 items: sometimes the swipes 'stop short', sometimes they just fail for no obvious reason. A swipe is also a LOT more physical effort than a tap — if I could have just pressed a "DELETE" button 50 times, it would have been a lot more palatable (still short of a proper multi-delete, of course).
Some kind of data-selection mode where I can drag across all the elements I want to select would be awesome.
Individual app’s capabilities also vary based on whether they are windowed or not. For example, you can’t airplay out of YouTube unless the app is full screen (even though once you’ve moved it to your Apple TV, you can switch away freely).
Discoverability is also crap. You have to dig into the manual (which you have to “buy” for free) to get the full details of the feature.
That was a rule for very good reason, and it will take some time to erode, but it’s definitely not as true today as it once was. It’s no consolation, but the first iPad - from the era of usable Apple design - was much better. Not in terms of power or weight, of course, but the OS didn’t have all these weird mystery-meat controls, gestures, broken multi-windowing etc.