I think the whole point of OS X is for it to be user-friendly enough for people to not have to deal the nitty-gritty underpinnings of Linux. I don't mind getting close to the metal since I'm a software engineer née systems guy (wasted high-school youth? pff). In fact my primary dev box is Arch/emacs/awesome so needless to say I spend a fair amount of time in my dotfiles and editing scripts.
I'm not entirely informed as to the details of the export procedure. But I think it's a fair expectation for an OS X user to not to deal with all of the nitty-gritty details of Linux. Saying "its as easy to do in OS X as it is in Linux" isn't really a fair defense.
The comparison with linux makes it look like there is a tried and true way to export your data, and iTunes or iPhoto devs are just too complacent to so it, as linux devs are as well.
That's not the case IMO.
There's just no perfect procedure for moving your data from iPhoto or iTunes to anything else. Most of the things the author lists (preferences, usage data, starring etc) can't be storred in any universally compatible format under any OS. You can export all your photo at once, but it will be the bare files and anything that can't be storred as exif or id3 data will be gone, except if you are willing to deal with the nitty gritty stuffs, and make a script to move these data by yourself.
Actually she's ranting about the lack of a universal data format keeping as much information as iPhoto or iTunes keeps in database. That's a gvalid rant I think, but it's a problem of a higher level than iPhoto or iTunes export functions, or using OS X or linux.
I'm not entirely informed as to the details of the export procedure. But I think it's a fair expectation for an OS X user to not to deal with all of the nitty-gritty details of Linux. Saying "its as easy to do in OS X as it is in Linux" isn't really a fair defense.