Most things about iOS7 seem inconsistent, and like they were rushed - which they were. I mean Johny Ive was head of UI for like 9 months only, and had to change everything in iOS in that period. These changes should've arrived in iOS8 in order to be well thought out and mature enough, but for some reason they decided to push them to iOS7.
I certainly don't know: it could well be people rushing to get their musk on iOS after the Forstall ouster, but
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-09/apple-loses-china-s... could have something to do with it too. Maybe after that kind of bad news Apple decided it needed to get its new China-oriented iPhone out quickly to stop the bleeding, at the cost of time to dink alignments and overlaps?
If they removed the new design, iOS7 would be a really underwhelming release for users. The background downloading would clearly be the banner feature.. but aside from that?
Personally I would much rather they just removed some of the gradients and textures and instead focused on improving things like inter-app sharing, notifications, the keyboard, widgets/live tiles etc.
They would have had time to improve existing apps and work out existing inconsistencies. iOS 6 was far from perfect, and there was plenty of room for improvement without a complete redesign.
the iPhone 5C package is a love letter to the art of graphic design. use of color, layout, typography, and form to create a device that has the soul of a printed magazine. at least, that's what i gather.
So far it sounds like they did. The main criticisms of iOS 7 are, as usual with new Apple products, from the edges of the digerati. I'll see what my wife says when she gets it on her new 5S.
