UI changes, no matter how great, are always going to piss off someone. A lot of the time that someone probably has a very good reason to be pissed off. BUT the changes might also benefit a lot of people who aren't as vocal. We shouldn't hold back innovation because we're scared of pissing people off. Of course we also shouldn't change just for the sake of it.
[This isn't directed specifically at the parent but at the issue in general].
The root cause is the traditional old style vs substance. This fits your observation that its harder to use, both to read and to keyboard. But its not marketed / designed as a tool to do anything, its a fashion accessory, so its irrelevant if its usable. What matters is if its shiny. That led you astray into the whole ageism anti-hipster thing. I also laugh at hipster kids, but the problem in this individual scenario has nothing to do with age.
Imagine if a hardware store released the iHammer and it was just like a conventional hammer, but cost much more so you could show off how rich you must be, and was painted blue, they made the hammer head pointy to be edgy and cool, had lace tied around the handle, and shipped it in a really cool origami clear plastic box. Anyone in search of a productive carpenters tool is going to be horribly disappointed and make fun of the iHammer, but thats not the point, the correct reason to buy a iHammer is to show off to their peers.
iDevices are no longer useful. That's OK. They're supposed to be fashion accessories, not useful devices.
For analogy I have nothing against women who wear wedding dresses to a wedding instead of sweatpants and tee shirt, or people who market wedding dresses to women who want to wear them while getting married, it certainly fills a need for them very well, and profitably. The point I'm making is its pointless for a gang of construction workers to complain about women's wedding dresses, all "LOL they're selling wedding dresses how useless because the train will get stuck in the bulldozer hydraulics" and the other construction dude all "LOL yeah and how does she intend to get the cement stains out of that fabric anyway".
If your particular situation values style over usefulness more than any other device on the market, and some device fits your needs better than other devices on the market, hey, have fun with it.
Or maybe rephrased a basic product design goal is a fairly objective observation (although I may be wrong, but I don't think so). However, a (subjective) discussion about some users desires being trivial or non-trivial is way far away from that discussion.
I am making the claim that iDevices are not just a fashion accessory and in fact are a highly productive, useful mobile device for what people do with mobile devices. The success in the iPhone has been in large part due to its utility - the entire phone industry basically works like an iPhone does now.
Competing for customers remains a balancing act between increasing usability and the aesthetics/fashion of the device - clearly a gold iPhone has little to do with usability, but will sell heavily because it has a fashion edge in some quarters. But none of this would matter if the device wasn't still useful. My construction site superintendent step dad moves to an iPhone because it worked better than his BlackBerry. Rail yard workers I worked with are moving to rugged-case iPads over ruggedized PCs because the latter are difficult to use. Airline mechanics use them to log their daily activities and order parts. These folks don't necessarily move the needle of sales the way fashion does, but they wouldn't use an iPhone if it didn't help their job.
Unfortunately the issue is the lack of a quality alternative. My best friend was an iPhone user, then switched to a Samsung Galaxy S2 because he wanted to be able to use is phone as a mass storage device, among other things. Eventually he switched back to the iPhone because the Galaxy was so unreliable. After less than a year, his phone would just silently shut off a couple times throughout the day. And he's far from the only person I know who's had Android reliability problems. My old HTC Incredible would stop responding to input a couple times a week until I yanked the battery.
All that said, I'm sticking with Android because I have a high tolerance for pain. iDevices may no longer be useful, but at least they work.
I don't understand what light colours have to do with hipsters though, most UIs tend towards lighter colours, it's the old school unix coonsoles that preferred dark.