The redesign is broken, but part of the motivation was cleaning up after the felt, wood, and leather fetisch, even though Forstall somehow managed to get all the blame for that.

Steve Jobs was probably great on a more holistic design level, and that's the sense of design awareness we tend to give him credit for. It still allowed weird and outright design trends every now and then, though, but not in a way that tainted the entirety of the design.