Yes they are idiots. Well more likely they were cogs in a dysfunctional bureaucracy that is not allowed to do good work because it doesn't allow common sense to drive decision making. So the 'idiot' here is an organization, maybe, and not a person.

Yes, the UI was obviously terrible before the accident happened. My first thought when I saw the picture was, wow, that's terrible.

You seem to be one of those people who doesn't believe that things can have inherent quality, or that anyone can perceive that quality. It's a sort of nihilism about the idea of excellence. But people do this everyday. It's easy. It's a natural impulse that most humans have when you interact with anything: this is shitty, this isn't shitty. So bad design is when something is made that's shitty and doesn't have to be.

And if a large well-funded corporation makes something shitty, that's pathetic. But it happens all the time because organisations and leaders are incompetent.