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Come on, iOS is not so special. Grandmas all over the world get by just fine on an Android as well. If you don't do much with your device, you don't need much. At the same time, it is obvious that gestures should be consistent, and the documentation should be clear, on device, and easy to find.

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I think this is a point where we'll fundamentally disagree, for all practical intents and purposes, no regular user ever has or ever will read the manual for their smartphone. Your phone comes with one, have you read it? Documentation is a crutch for complexity and it's only acceptable for hard topics and advanced users. Most people don't even touch the manuals for all the appliances they own, never mind your elderly relatives. If they run into a problem, they'll ask someone to help, not look for the manual.

I think you’re missing a key fact about who cell phone users _can_ _be_. The dumbest people on this planet can still pick up any iPhone anywhere and be able to use it even if they’ve never used the device itself once. It’s muscle memory to people who wouldn’t know what to do with a manual in the first place. You have to accept that there is no barrier to advanced communication technology to anyone with the means to procure said devices. While I appreciate a finely tuned platform for my technology uses, I still carry an iPhone in particular so that I don’t need to do all of that advanced tweaking and personalization by sacrificing maybe 5% of my overall performance by using an unmodified iPhone running iOS in particular. Sacrificing that 5% of performance means the device has no barrier of entry for 99.9% of humans old enough and cognizant enough to procure a similar technology and be able to fully interact with me on a digital medium. Bringing it back to the topic at hand, those 99.9% of people includes family members who didn’t grow up with electricity let alone technology.

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