iOS 7
Man, iOS 7 feedback is incredibly frustrating for no reason that actually matters.<p>I feel like I spent the past few years falling in love with flat design, on mobile and on the web -- and I read article after article from historically pro-Apple bloggers/authors explaining that no, flat design was fundamentally a bad move: the strongest metaphor is that of the phone as a tool -- that we needed skeumorphism, we need hints for interactivity, we needed polish.<p>And now iOS 7 is out!  And I'm excited, because the flat (okay, 'mature') design philosophy that I've been told is a bad idea is finally here -- and now it's suddenly a great leap forward because Apple decided to do it?  When Microsoft decided that the average consumer understood what a smartphone was for and no longer needed the physical cues, they were wrong and fools -- but when Ive decides it, its because its time to move to mature and modern?<p>Here's the thing, though: I think iOS 7, on the whole, looks worse than iOS 6.  The stock icons look outright ugly; interfaces like the call-answer screen and the calculator look poorly designed, and everything has the sense that it just needs another run or two through the review process.  Not that it's irreversibly bad, but I don't think it's executing as well as WP or MIUI are.  (With exceptions, of course: I think the translucency paradigm looks great, as well as the changes to the UI Kit.)<p>(People arguing 'its just a beta, it'll obviously change over time': what happened to Apple's relentless pursuit of quality before introducing something to the public?  What's the point of secrecy if you're showing off v0.8 and not v1.0?)<p>I imagine actually <i>using</i> the new iOS won't be bad at all.  It's just reading about it that frustrates me, which is definitely a sign I should be doing less of it.<p>(I own an iPad, iPhone, and MBA.)