I do share his frustration with the contact list on the iPhone. I also have over 1000 contacts, which built up over the years of painstakingly migrating them between models of Nokia phones, often having to write scripts to do it with. Then I got a Macbook and it paired with my Nokia phone so easily and painlessly I was really impressed, and when I got an iPhone my contacts magically ended up on it and I was impressed even further.
However, with this number of contacts, finding one is quite difficult. Apart from the alphabetical sorting by surname, scrolling to the top is impractical, or even through one letter of the alphabet. So, I have to rely on the search, and the button is hard to get to.
A similar problem happens when you want to phone someone you've been messaging. If the message history is long, it's a long scroll to get to the top of it to get to the contacts options.