That's really not true or fair. I'm in the process of giving my ~70 year old mother my old iPhone so I can send her photo messages and such.
The teaching experience I've had running through how to use applications is almost exactly the same as here. (Though I must say that this is on IO6). Simple things like the way you 'Add' or 'Edit' something being inconsistent really do throw her off. I'm sure anyone who has guided very none-technical people through using technology can relate. It's nothing to do with being 'an idiot'.
There are plenty of older people who take a lot longer to pick up technology like this, and it's also worth noting that as a demographic they are often wealthier than their younger counterparts, and a valuable customer segment.
Nobody is saying users are idiots or that there is no learning curve for some older people using iOS (I have introduced it to people in their 70s and 80s too).
The assertion is that the author is pretending to be an idiot in the way he is claiming the iOS7 is somehow worse than iOS6.
There are faults in iO7, but there is no evidence that it is harder for people to learn, and plenty of evidence that it is basically more usable.
Actually, that's backwards... You know that something is well designed precisely by pretending to be an idiot, and asking yourself if you still know what to do...
That's a very rudimentary view of UX. If I'm writing an app that helps radiological engineers calculate radiation dose, should I pretend to be an idiot? Likewise, in a world where kids have grown up with these devices, should we still think that way about UX? I think we can give users some benefit of the doubt. Each app should have a design that reflects the purpose of the app. Consistency is not always the top priority in UX.
I'm not saying that's the only step in design...
In my attempt at brevity, I lost the nuance.
The point I was trying to make is that if you're taking the view that your users need to have a significantly higher than average the level of knowledge in a domain area (i.e. equivalent to the knowledge of the domain area that the product designer has), you're going to end up with an un-usable product for the left end of the bell curve of your user population.
That left end of the bell curve is relative (as you point out) to your user population, but exists nonetheless - an "idiot" radiological engineer is not an idiot in relation to the general population, but is one in relation to the 99th percentile best radiological engineer (and, hopefully, in relation to the radiological engineer building your product).
What I was trying to say is that a well-designed UX requires that the 1% "idiot" of your target user population still knows what to do...
Gotcha, I'd agree with that. I have some bitterness extending from sham "UX Hackers" selling e-books that basically boil down to pretending to be an idiot, and thinks that is enough. :)
Many of the complaints around these iOS 7 screenshots revolve around HOW WILL I EVER KNOW "< BACK" IS A BUTTON!?!?!?!
There are many valid complaints that may annoy designers and may initially confuse people, but in reality in really shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes to get oriented with even the most confusing UI changes.
Exactly right. I've never seen so many articles that completely miss the point of the experience. Instead of "where do I tap?", the point is that everything should be a valid tap target - that's the beauty of a touch-first environment. Everything is tappable. If my 3 year old had no issues when we moved from iOS 6 to 7, then adults have no excuse. These are (so far) all straw-man arguments.
While on a personal level I agree with you, having interacted directly with my users for many of them it's not pretending (idiot is the wrong term) I don't think it's a good idea to measure users based on our own yardstick.
Now the article did seem to be coming from a place of "I have never seen a computer, phone or tablet before in my life how does this work?"
