I personally find the revised designs the author proposes worse than the originals. Sure, the extra space allows larger text and icons, but the overall design quality starts lacking in my opinion.

Maybe I am conditioned to like cards by their excessive use in existing designs, but it might also just be that cards look better, and therefore make the product appear more polished and the site more inviting to use and read. It might not be the most minimal possible design, but a site being pretty is great if functionality doesn't suffer.