Every time I look at the Reminders app, I'm like "Steve would have thrown a fit seeing this piece of junk". It's so... clunky and lacking any sense of... uh... flow?
Steve liked skeuomorphism even when it made Jony Ive 'wince' http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/05/apple-designer-jonathan...
I suspect Steve just didn't care about to-do lists and now someone who does care has managed to get a (minor) improvement through.
Steve Jobs was alive when iOS5 was previewed so he would have seen AND approved it.