Apple and Tesla are two companies that somehow have a widespread reputation for great UX that I think are absolutely atrocious in that area. It's not just 70 yearolds, an iphone is unusuable for someone of any age if they've never used one before and don't have someone to tell them how to do core actions like back or home.

Tesla loves to hide critical functionality in non-standard places, often buried in touch screen menus. They can move items at any time. That's insane to me, but I guess I'm the outlier.

Android's move to gestures is lame copycat behavior. I've actually seen people online defending it on the grounds that using gestures feels cooler. Maybe that explains it, many people will take UI gimmicks over solid usability.

Right, especially Tesla. The one thing I will say about Tesla's UI (not UX) is that for a while (and admittedly to this day, still, largely) it looked far better and pleasing than most auto UIs. But 1) others are catching up on that front, and 2) as you say, the UX is often garbage.