Here's my reality when I fly with my small children. I make it a game. I give them the printouts and have them navigate the family around the airport, etc. Airports are designed very well. They are designed for someone who doesn't speak the local language to find their way around.
And so, the way I look at it is: If a couple of kids, 9 and 10 years old, don't have a problem then I think for the most part these are solutions looking for problems. A piece of paper does just fine for probably 99% of travel scenarios.
Had the comment poster said something like "There's this one app that helps me get around and this is how it works" I think I would have reacted positively to that statement. The exact quote was:
"If this (eventually) leads to the possibility of one -1- properly designed and implemented airport app rather than me having a couple dozen different apps installed, all buggy and crash prone and with hardly any common UI features at all - then I'm all for it..."
Which triggered the question: Why does someone have to go through all of this pain and aggravation when millions of people have been travelling around the world for decades with nothing more than a few pieces of paper?
Most of what I read about this is unnecessary. Airports were designed way before smartphones every existed. Ergo, they work very well without them. In fact, they work very well with nothing more than a few pieces of paper in your hand.