In theory, the problems highlighted in the article would have become apparent shortly into the process of assigning an icon to every menu item. Forging ahead despite the impossibility of doing a good job on the task is a sign of orders being issued from top to bottom without feedback working its way from the bottom to the top.

Top down micromanaging of design is how Apple has always worked. It's not what's different now.

Yeah, if anything it seems like there is not enough top-down micromanaging. Especially with the icon consistency parts.

The difference is the lack of top-down QA and taste.

I'm afraid you both may be right in this case. "Make it blue!" - stakeholder. "Ok, but then we'll have to change everything for consistency." - VP of UI. Produces the horror that we have today.

If your UI designers can get this much crap past upper management, the managers have officially become the problem.

It's like what Miyamoto warned: a delayed UI is eventually good, but a rushed UI is forever bad.