> So someone explain to me in non hand-wavy terms how you'd expect this to be any different/better?

From the article:

Any attempt to change or remove that password must pass through iOS, which would require to provide the old password first. Forgot the original password? There’s no going back, you’re stuck with what you have unless you are willing to factory reset the device and lose all data in the process.

Apparently, there was no password recovery. Now there is, and as a convenience it even skips the whole email step. This has implications for accessing the data present on the device, which is the whole point of the article.