I've watched people struggle like he's describing. Too many upgrades. Too many authorizations. Too many restrictions. They are jumping through hoop after hoop just to do basic stuff. If they are young they probably don't know any better. But for anyone who has been around, this has gotten to be a joke.
If you have stuck with Apple over the long haul, then you remember what it was like before OSX. When OSX was first introduced you had to upgrade your Mac hardware just to run it or it would be dog slow. Then it got better over time as we all upgraded but it has gradually become more and more annoying. How many people are staring at a spinning beachball at this very moment? Trying to appeal to PC users, all the Mac vs PC nonsense. Then trying to lock down people's music and other files and make them "subscribers", like they are some sort of media licensing company. Apple is no longer an alternative to the typical computer hassles. They have become a primary source of them!
But only if you have been using Macs for many years can you see this. Noobs and fanboys are not going to notice. They will wait minutes for their Mac to boot and stare endlessly at the beachball and accept that this is "fast, start-of-the-art computing".
While noobs suffer through iPhoto staring at beachballs, I will boot in seconds and process my photos, running in a background process, in half the time, using a more traditional UNIX without the Cocoa cruft. No hassles.