While it is certainly true that many users don't share the enthusiasm for computers many of us have and they may often also be quite unwilling to learn complex systems for small productivity boosts, it is by no means true that they are all just to dumb to be empowered by computers. They do mostly lack the frame of reference what could even be possible with these machines (As do many programmers today) and thus seldom address the big issues they face.
Application starting up slow? They all do that and there are some even slower, so computers are just slow, right? Having to click through 15 Menus to activate an often used function? Nobody ever told them there was a convenient shortcut (And since they don't know it and thus never use it, it will get removed in the next version, hooray for telemetry!)
This also extends to programmers more and more. Processing 2000 Records takes 20 seconds? That's good! Have you seen this other app! We are fast! That UI is crap! No matter, I will never use it, lets install complexopensourcetoolnotfornoobs.
One difference the article also points out is that in the early days of computing, many of these today revered (or sadly forgotten) hackers actually wanted to bring computing power to the masses. They were not satisfied with dumbing it down or building it only for themselves. We need more of this sentiment today. If every developer would use the software they build, it surely would be much more performant, easier to use and powerful under the hood.
While it may seem impossible sometimes to get all these at once, we should always strive for better computing and ease of use != dumbing down!