That sounds like it is simply indenting the whole line... not reformatting the actual block... i.e. respacing internally within the line. Which is what the elastic tabstops is doing.
It's not simply realigning each line. It's reformatting the entire block, realigning ALL tabstops within the lines, so that blocks of text are all positioned within a grid.
It's a surprising article from Ars. Apple is a massively successful and profitable company. They don't need to commoditise OSX. They're not trying to compete on market share. They're trying make money by making better computers. Something they are doing very well thank you very much.