There is nothing ridiculous about expecting an app to launch when I tap it. Perhaps you use your device more slowly, or you have adapted to watching animation end before you tap, but you can't judge others for using it differently, much less faster. This reminds me of antennagate and Apple trying to tell everyone they were holding their phone wrong. That was funny.
Furthermore, saying it's just 1/3 or 3/4 or a second or whatever it is, is the wrong way to look at it. Because intuitively one would tend to dismiss that since it's so little. The right way to see it is, personally my daily usage I tend to tap things 2-3 even 4 times before it responds. During those multiple tappings, workflow is disrupted, I'm not getting where I want on the first try.
And when I used 6s, I went from lock screen to home screen and did 3d touch on the phone icon, and pressed hard and that whole effort to 2-3 seconds or so, and the 3d touch wouldn't register due to input-blocking! And when it didn't register I had to 3d touch again. So that's several seconds of disrupting workflow for something that's intended to be a fast shortcut. If it fails to be a fast shortcut, why use it?
The bottom line is workflow is affected significantly, you can't dismiss it by just saying that it's just a second or less.
One more thing, when people complain about iOS responsivess/jerkiness/stuttering in many cases it's all about ms, you'd be surprised how a few ms can impact UI. It sounds little but it's very notable. It's similar to video and audio being out of sync, a few ms make a big difference right?
