[duncanwilcox]

You have to think of the constraints that informed the original design. There's very little horizontal space on iPhone and iPod touch, 320 points to fit a descriptive label and the control.

So labels on the sides don't work because of space constraints, on iPhone anyway.

The windowed version is also less space efficient than the stock iOS control but I think it has merit because it shows all possible states. What I'd change is reverse the tinting, to make the active state more visible and the other states shaded.