The iPhone comparisons are extremely cringe. Real application do so much more then this contrived example. Something that feels fast isn’t the same thing as something is fast.
Would I advise beginner programmer’s to read this book? Sure, let them think about ways to structure code.
If he just had concluded with, that it is important to optimize for the right thing that would be fine. But he seems more interested in picking a fight with clean code.
And yes performance is a lost art in programming