The paradigm works well as long as the designer has a clear idea of what the user wants to do and as long as the designer('s boss') and the user's goals are aligned - and as long as the designer could anticipate all use-cases.The advice in the article works well for simple things. Simple things can, and should, be perfect.
Unfortunately not everything can be simplified until it makes sense to an unskilled operator (or an unskilled designer). Ideally, complex things are composed of simple things... but if that were true, wouldn't we'd all be running UNIX command-line desktops?
Contrary to the author's leading premise, the best designs don't just work by taking options away from the user. They hide those options until they're needed... and when they are needed, they make those options easy to find.
And that's hard work, the sort of hard work that can't be waved away with a list of trendy bullet points from some respected design guru who mysteriously never seems to be around when you need to use a different printer than the one the OS thinks you want.