There seem to be a lot of supporting arguments (look at all these dead projects he deems to have been fast, elegant, and efficient, also, hey, my current toys are not made for me to play with like I used to be able to, and the battery life sucks). But what is the actual thesis?

It seems like he wants hacker toys and is unhappy that everything is built for consumers now. I can't get anything deeper out of it.

The EU vs. US/Asia thing just seems like a weird proxy for saying real techies don't like extruded technology product but it's what the market asked for and now we have lots of it.