Agreed, but there is one possible saving grace to it. It looks like if you follow the guide, they have you remove one section at a time, and you actually fret that section yourself, so you build up, removing a section as you learn, until you don't use it at all. Like training wheels.
Not sure that really gets you there any faster, but it might work as encouragement for some?
Kind of the opposite of an autoharp/zither in practice, but a similar concept. An autoharp/zither has many notes, with a string for each note, and no frets. So rather than pressing a button to fret certain notes, the autoharp/zither mutes all the "wrong" notes, with a segmented piece of felt for each button/bar. Then you can strum all those strings, and only the right notes sound.
Here's an autoharp master, Bryan Bowers. I saw him perform in the 70's. In this video (skip to ~ 5:30 to hear the end result), he shows how he developed his technique. He does a lot of picking of the individual strings (with metal finger picks on each finger/thumb), and I assume he completely un-mutes it at times, and/or maybe chooses harmonically related chords and selectively picks strings within that harmonic structure. AT any rate, it really elevates the instrument to another level, and sounds beautiful.
-ERD50