It seems very telling to me that the Standard Windows Desktop is generally considered a wasteland of discarded program and file icons, basically where you throw your digital trash...yet iOS decided that this was the design they wanted for the main start page of their OS.
No wonder there is such a divide among users. I don't think age has anything to do with it though.
The huge difference here is that on iOS you don't have random files lying around your home screen. The springboard is for apps, with a dock for the most common ones to persist between screens.
On Windows (and macOS) the desktop is fundamentally different, used differently, and is often obscured by your windowed content.
If by "single folder on a hidden home page containing unused default apps" you mean "App draw", then you've described Androids (arguably superior) default UX.
Put another way.. You're manually 'fixing' the iOS UX to operate like the Android "default"?
No wonder there is such a divide among users. I don't think age has anything to do with it though.