I own mac, pc, android, ios. With each revision, ios has become harder to use because they keep adding new things without considering holistic experience.

Take a look at the Settings in ios7. It's nothing but a list of identical looking settings that go on for pages. Everything is nothing but text and thin lines.

A simple color-coded organization, categorization, and minor variation in fonts would've gone a long way.

Android's settings isn't much better, but at least things are better marked with text labels and clearer icons.

Apple has long crossed that line of less-is-more. They are firmly in the less-is-less territory. Both companies are leaving a lot on the table by being too boxed-in in their thinking, but Android is at least taking more humble approach.

"Take a look at the Settings in ios7. It's nothing but a list of identical looking settings that go on for pages. Everything is nothing but text and thin lines."

Err, it's pretty much always been like this.

The basic layout has stayed the same, but the left-side list has grown quite a bit over the years, as has the number of settings on the right side.

The original layout may have been serviceable years ago, but now it leaves a lot to be desired.

The current split-pane interface works fine if you go in there to change multiple items on a regular basis, but that's not exactly how most people use the settings.

> and minor variation in fonts would've gone a long way.

This would look awful, but you make a good point. Having little icons next to each one would be good as well.

Yes it 'could' look awful, but it could also look good too. That's where good designers earn their paychecks. As a designer, I sympathize with designers at Apple. Some of them must feel pretty frustrated.

But iOS 6 had functional styles. You could tell at a glance where the toggles, sliders, buttons, and non-interactive UI elements were at any time. Stripping these elements down to nothing doesn't make the device any easier to use.

iOS 7 strips down graphical elements so that the style is the substance.

iOS 6 and earlier were stuffed with obvious affordance. Certainly there was some ridiculous skeuomorphism but it was far more usable. The calendar is, for me, the best example of iOS 7 design gone wrong: A lot of motion, very little visual distinction between elements, and overall an loss of utility.

For me it would have to be the replacement of the universally-known signal strength bar with "5 balls".

Takes more space, conveys no more information, uses a design element that is already used for other purposes (such as breadcrumb nav)

It's much more legible than the tiny bars symbol. The bars icon is a bad fit for a wide and short space. The new signal strength icon looks like something that Ive wanted from the beginning:

http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5011df3deab8ea5e1f0...

No I'm not kidding. The extreme minimalism in iOS7 is a style in and of itself.

Pre-iOS7, the GUI style provided utility and substance by always very clearly indicating state (which app is currently open was absolutely obvious to see even at the shortest glance because they all looked so very different), context (how screen elements relate to each other, how they are grouped together) and affordance (possible modes of interactions, what is a button, what can be manipulated how).

That substance is now gone, overridden by the style of extreme minimalism.

Outside of the valley bubble skeuomorphism is what people require in order to use the devices. A button needs to look like a button or people are confused. Im talking about customers. Not the people that designed it and live the technology and are bored with it after a few short years. 7 is a travesty, the beginning of the end.