I'm with this right up to the part where it shows an iPhone and pronounces it magical. Anyone who's ever seen a technophobic grandparent use a smartphone knows this is ridiculous. The iPhone (and smartphones in general) sucks rocks as a "simple telephone".
The "small number of affordances" point in the post seems equally silly: I count 20 (!) icons on that screen and five hardware buttons, only three of which have anything at all to do with making a phone call.
Now, it's a great device. And it's far more than a phone. And maybe there's a so-subtle-it-isn't-even-made-in-the-post point to be made about the "scalability" of simplicity. But as it stands I don't follow this at all.
I don not think it's that simple. My dad have never been able to figure out any phone before he got the iphone. Now the calls for support have stopped completely.
But of course it's not the iphone only as much as it is the touchscreen. That is the game changer, Apple was just the best company to take advantage of that.
I haven't had the same experience with my mom. She tried for a month to get along with her iPhone, until she gave up.
The touchscreen is great because it can expose only the controls relevant for the action you want to perform. However, the UI's organization is not flat anymore. Instead it's a tree. And older people that have problems coping with modern devices usually rote learn the path they have to take for the common use-cases ... and in the case of iPhones or Android phones that complexity has grown exponentially.
The touchscreen is also quite annoying for me at times. On my older Nokia I could dial a number or answer a phone call or hang-up without looking at the screen. Now I have to look at that screen every time, otherwise I need extra help, like voice recognition, which doesn't work so well for me as these things are optimized for people who's native language is English.
OP's point is that there are multiple definitions of simple. The rotary has one use case, the iPhone many.
A rotary phone is a simple telephone, so it's an example of Economical Design. The iPhone is not a "simple telephone", so it's an example of Elegant Design.
The "small number of affordances" point in the post seems equally silly: I count 20 (!) icons on that screen and five hardware buttons, only three of which have anything at all to do with making a phone call.
Now, it's a great device. And it's far more than a phone. And maybe there's a so-subtle-it-isn't-even-made-in-the-post point to be made about the "scalability" of simplicity. But as it stands I don't follow this at all.