[gattilorenz]

In the good old days pre-iOS 4 Apple wouldn't implement the "swipe down from the top of the screen" to access settings because there was no easy way to discover that the action was possible... [1]

I do think that part of the early choices were quite rational, but the spirit of "ease of use trumps everything" got somewhat watered down over the years...

[1] and I used Cydia hacks to get that feature (well, almost, you had to swipe horizontally). There's often a contrast between ease of use and assisting power users.