First, he had to very explicitly enable that keyboard (not easily done by accident, considering it's about 7 taps deep in Settings). After enabling, it is rather simple to activate that keyboard – hitting the globe icon on the keyboard will cycle through all enabled keyboards.
Second, the keyboard isn't ridiculous. It's actually quite powerful. He took a screenshot of the Chinese – Simplified (Handwriting) keyboard, which allows users to draw characters in the blank area. I hear it's an incredibly popular input method in China. Of course, the iPhone offers 6 other Chinese input methods, ranging from traditional keyboards to the drawing methods.
Not all of the "Chinese" speaking population live in the same country or speak the same language. Further, they also have different writing systems, with simplified being official in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore, and traditional being used in Hong Kong & Taiwan.
There are also different phonetic systems, like Zhuyin/bopomofo. Some of these are taught in the educational systems and used as computer input method.
Apple choosing to support only one of these would be far more drastic than forcing all Latin alphabet languages to use the same layout. There could also likely be political ramifications, as traditional and simplified are the subjects of significant debate. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_on_traditional_and_simpl... ]
Within a single language, yes. Obviously you want a different method for Chinese than for English, but I don't want to choose between six different ways of inputting Chinese.
Check out the input method list on whatever OSs you use, and I expect you'll see multiple Chinese input methods. OS X 10.8 has 10, Windows 7 has dozens, a quick Google search shows that Ubuntu 12 around 13.
It turns out that, with over a billion people and dozens of dialects, many different writing styles, and a long history of different electronic input methods, Chinese speakers really do need multiple different ways of inputing Chinese.
Second, the keyboard isn't ridiculous. It's actually quite powerful. He took a screenshot of the Chinese – Simplified (Handwriting) keyboard, which allows users to draw characters in the blank area. I hear it's an incredibly popular input method in China. Of course, the iPhone offers 6 other Chinese input methods, ranging from traditional keyboards to the drawing methods.