[ozataman]

So much effort was poured into just redesigning, repackaging basic apps on the surface. I think some of them look and exhibit functional behavior straightforwardly worse than before:

- Smaller fonts and less obvious icons on the weather app

- Less info on the world clock without the digital time text, which helps grasp the time at a glance especially when you're looking at several zones.

- Smaller direction character font on the compass (why would anyone do that? It's like 40% of what it used to be and is only a single char!)

- Less contrast across the entire interface with all white text; harder to discern differences.

... and at best a neutral change across the others. I haven't yet installed it myself, but the screenshots look disappointing. I am not dismissing the idea of removing skeumorphisms, but this particular implementation/execution seems like a step in the direction of less refined for Apple.

I have seen very few screenshots so far that made me say "oh that's so much better, wow". Several did make me say "Gosh, why would you reduce the font size there?!?! Why would you make the icon much less obvious?"

Just to note that I am not trying to be negative - I am certain with this much solid engineering talent, there will be features we'll love.

I hope I'm proven wrong once the OS is officially out and we're hooked in the following few weeks.

[fredsted]

- Weather app: Some fonts are smaller, some are larger, but you get a great looking animation that shows the current weather. In my opinion the app is much prettier than before, and more useful since you can see, for example, whether you need to bring a raincoat immediately.

- Clock: Try tapping on the clocks: http://d.pr/i/yrmI

- About less contrast: You can turn on bolder fonts in the interface.

I really, really like iOS 7. Especially on the iPhone, somehow on iPad I had more of a meh reaction, and I installed it there first. But going back to my iPhone with iOS 6 made me realize how dated that OS looks and feels.

Forgetting the looks, all the little new features and improvements are great, like all the new Safari stuff, command center and the improved app switcher. Apple says there are 200 new features and I definitely believe them.

[yapcguy]

> But going back to my iPhone with iOS 6 made me realize how dated that OS looks and feels.

Isn't this simply emotion - based upon you already knowing that iOS 7 is newer?

If you showed iOS 6 and 7 to someone who had never seen an iPhone before, how would they figure out which was the newer design?

[potatolicious]

Design doesn't exist in a vacuum, if you showed iOS6 and iOS7 to someone who had never seen it before, they would surmise age by comparing to other designs they have seen.

In the same way you would see something that you've never seen before and go "that's so 80s".

Considering that Apple didn't originate the flat trend, and that the web has been going flat (or flatter) for a while now, I don't think it would take a genius to figure out which is which.

[yapcguy]

I'm not sure the web is embracing flat, it's more like designers get bored and feel the urge to do something. They have to justify their paycheck and raison d'etre.

It's like the fashion industry, what is out of fashion comes back in because somebody says so and the catwalk is then flooded with retro fashion.

[potatolicious]

Oh yay, this again.

People use this tired old argument on us too - "what? Why is IT building the website again? Don't we already have one? Welp, guess they have to justify their paychecks somehow...", it's tiresome, reductionist, grossly ignorant, and textbook HN: everyone is useless except me.

Fashion isn't a simple cause and effect - it isn't designers dictating taste to an unwilling public. The influence is circular - design influences public aesthetic influences more design. The fashion industry steals plenty of ideas right off the streets, it's far, far from a one-way relationship. "Fashion" is just an endless cycle of the public influencing products and vice versa. Sometimes it will retread familiar territory, other times it'll do something new.

And thank god we have it. I for one am glad we're rid of animated GIFs and fluorescent green text, or do you think that evolution is also bored designers justifying their paychecks?

But nah, none of the above can be true, everyone's a useless parasite except the vaunted Hackers, hallowed be their names!

[fredsted]

For me it's the removal of textures like wood and leather. And the fact that almost all the icons are more futuristic rather than illustrations of real life objects, see Game Center, Photos, Reminders.

[djillionsmix]

I agree, the humanist touches and concordantly superior identifiability in the one OS clearly identify it as the modern iteration compared with the cold, chilly 70s-style pseudo-futurism of the other.

[ozataman]

Well, that's very good to hear. Looking forward to the official release.

[nnnnni]

Reading about the bolder fonts is a huge relief. That was my #1 complaint about the earlier screenshots.

[crazygringo]

The official weather app actually looks remarkably similar to the current Yahoo! Weather app, and seems to share the same icons.

Before it was 100% obvious what the icons meant at a glance -- a big yellow unmistakable sun, clear full clouds, etc.

The new ones are just outlines, you almost can't tell the white and yellow lines apart, you have to "decipher" them with your eyes to figure out the weather for the next few days. A huge step backwards in clarity.

[grin]

The Weather app had been powered by Yahoo! previously so they could have partnered with them after the release of their app to do the default app and update it for iOS7.

[bobbles]

It has a big yahoo icon in the corner so I'd say yes they did this.

[ozataman]

That's exactly how I feel; good description sir!

[shawndumas]

it looks the same because Yahoo built both.

[gdubs]

Worth pointing out that screenshots have not really told the story, ever since iOS 7 was released to developers this spring. There's an overall lightness and fun feeling that's only really apparent in actual usage. Subjective, obviously, but I've been using it for months now, and when I pick up an iOS 6 device it feels ancient.

[leoc]

I'm still a bit agape at what they seem to have done to the in-app back button. I mean, it's always been maybe the worst thing about the iOS UI, a wart thrown into a convenient corner of the screen where it's easy for unsophisticated users to forget about or miss entirely. Obviously, it's just the outer symptom of a real, hard-to-handle problem - the different layers of 'back' or 'escape' in a full-screen mobile OS - but what have they done with it? Is it still a button, or just an indication that you can swipe left-to-right across the screen to go back? If it is still a button, then why in tarnation have they made it (possibly) harder to notice and (certainly) to identify as a button? Maybe the free-standing left arrow makes it harder to miss the 'go back' meaning compared to the cutesy border of the old button, but it looks like one step forward, one back at best.

[gdubs]

It has to do with the way UIViewController titles now work. When you tap something that pushes a new view controller onto the stack, the current title animates left and _becomes_ the new back button. The animation is not only pretty, it makes it really obvious where you are going, and how to get back.

[leoc]

Ooh, that sounds pretty impressive actually. I wonder why none of the reviews I saw seem to have mentioned that.

[melange]

Not only that, but by default, swipinging the view controller off to the right I.e. Physically reversing the animation that brought in in, also functions to go back, so the 'button' is more of a signpost of what you will go back to than something that must be used as a button.

The reviews don't mention this because frankly a lot of them are superficial - or they are focused on justifying a number or a thumbs up or down rating that they have assigned, rather than helping people to understand anything.

[FilterJoe]

Safari was in need of an overhaul - Chrome, Atomic, and other browsers were so much better that I pretty much stopped using Safari.

From what I saw in this review, the new Safari offers much more functionality than the prior version, devoting substantially more pixels to content and offering the iCloud Keychain feature.

I do agree though that the functionality hasn't improved significantly for most of the other apps. I'd be way more excited if the Control Center offered customization. My two most frequent settings (Cellular on/off, Location Services on/off) aren't in Control Center so it doesn't really give me much.