[commandar]

>In addition, I don't understand the pivot towards elevation. The industry has been moving towards flat design. I like flat. It's simple. Less design is often better than more deisgn.

I was absolutely relieved to see the elevation parts of the new design. Flat looks good, but it's been headed to an extreme recently. I can't stand the near total flatness of parts iOS7/8; it makes it very difficult for me to visually distinguish content.

[mrlase]

I'm interested to know which parts specifically you find hard to distinguish in iOS7/8? Are you experiencing any similar problems with current Android design language?

[commandar]

The calendar in particular is a complete disaster:

http://cdn1.appleinsider.com/13.06.17-Calendar-2.jpg

The navigation bar in general just looks like a mass of text to me most of the time, especially if there are more than two tabs:

http://www.okilla.com/uploadfile/1/2013/07/10/11373456479/13...

EDIT:

And no, I don't have similar issues on Android. Part of that could be the move to side drawers in Android apps. The greater contrast and lower reliance on lines as visual separators is definitely part of it as well.

[72deluxe]

I too find the flat snow-blindness white landscape difficult to navigate, and the removal of buttons looking like buttons means you have to blindly stab over the device at words to discover if they're buttons. I turned on the "make buttons look like buttons" option in Accessibility and they just look like early-90s hyperlinks instead. I wouldn't be surprised if they added a blinking scrolling marquee to complete the effect, and perhaps an animated rainbow-coloured horizontal ruler haha. I look like an idiot when attempting to use my iPad, sort of like those annoying types who double-click links on web pages (let's send two GET requests!)

I can only imagine how my mum gets on with it. The removal of buttons to do things is another thing - how the heck do you remove a bookmark in Safari on iOS? Ah yes, swipe sideways of course. This took me hours to discover. I am all for simplicity, but not for removal of hints/controls.

The Calendar application on OSX is now a big white blob. I could just stick a piece of blank A4 paper to my screen and get the same effect.

It distresses me, as you can tell. I shouldn't be squinting when using an application on a computer, or fumbling around with an iPad like it's a children's noisy toy or toy phone / etch-a-sketch. If they added beep boop boop beep wheeee noises then it'd complete the effect.