The thing I most dislike about iOS 7 is that it has caused every designer with a blog to write about how much better they could make iOS 7.

Meh. It doesn't seem like an obvious win to me. Especially the notepad.

Seriously.... I think the Apple iOS7 designs have some weird points, but they're overall decent enough, and hardly deserving of the shrill reactions I've seen. None of this guy's "fixes" really seems very compelling, and I'm left wondering why he bothered to write an entire blog post about them...

[and I'm no Apple fanboy, I like Android...]

typical designer. they just look at static mockups and don't think about interactions. okay if you have the 2x2 icon, how will other icons move relative to it when the big icon is moved around?

You might want to take a look how Windows Phone 8 does it. WP8 has different size tiles and moving them around is a piece of cake.

Exactly. WP tile resizing is fantastic. I'm not sure I could go back to iOS, even with it's app ecosystem.

IMHO this a far, far better design than Apple's. The saturated colors in Apple's design are just too garish. Some of the app and icon designs are really messed up, as the OP notes. (e.g. Notes, Calendar). How did Apple's GameCenter icon even make it past 1st draft. It is just mind-bendingly awful.

Although the configurable-size widgets are a good idea, perhaps the OP could outline how the interface should work when these are moved around (as another commenter suggested).

Now I want you to take that brightness slider, and drop the brightness on the phone 30%. Oh look, you just bought a good chunk of extra battery life. And with the bright colors you can still see stuff.

Those suggested interfaces look very messy and inconsistent.

Most of these are big improvements, mostly because his designs don't ask the user too think too much. They are a modern,but more gradual and evolutionary than Apple's.

His idea of widgets would be great way to bring them to iOS. Just an oversized button with changing text, like a little iPod nano. A simple way to make that work would be to have a little resizer when you click and hold.

He absolutely nails it. There are so many things wrong with the new design, but the biggest issue is a loss of clarity. If I would hand an iOS7 device to my mother, I would not be sure, she would have an easier time with it than with an Android device. They give up so much clarity, which was their last remaining big USP.

I like how in the :( versions the top status bar is all cluttered with low battery, gps, bluetooth, wifi etc. And the :) version is clean & minimal. Subtle persuasion! I don't think the app icons are an improvement, I dislike both. The final redesign, the lock screen, I way prefer the iOS version. The time is hard to read on the redesign.

>This is crucial if Apple wants the OS to continue to look consistent, because there is no way all developers are going to go back and redo the icons for all of their 900 000 apps!

And this is part of the point I think about the huge change here: Old unmaintained apps will look OLD and apps with active teams behind them will not.

I doubt anyone will come out with a mockup that everyone can agree on. That being said, I think there are a few nice decisions in this mockup which I prefer over the current release.

Tired of this bulshit...

I like most of your ideas. Agreed 100% on the icons. You lost me on the reminders screen though, yours looks 100x's worse to my eyes.

The calendar looks a lot better. I also vote up the use of the subtle buttons instead of colorful text buttons of iOS.

Meh, still looks like it took less than an hour to create each of those icons.

Imagine looking at the current IOS 7 interface in the dark. Blindingly bright.

I believe you just found the battery saving feature of the brighter look: You can turn the backlight down further

In practice it's no brighter than iOS 6.

That's not true. There was a zoomed out and pixellated comparison days ago between the default apps on both versions, and iOS7 was clearly brighter.

I've been using it on my phone for the past week and in practice there is no difference.

It is. Safari is all white (instead if blue), and the keyboard is also much lighter. The same is true for Mail, Settings, Music and Phone. Folders are all white too, and the "dock" is much lighter. And don't get me started on calendar and notes! Even the stupid clock is bright as sun :)

I guess I don't use mail or music or phone. Maybe I'm a weird user. iMessage is brighter, and the animations are janky at the moment. The clock redesign is annoying. It looks terrible. The new APIs available are great but I'm afraid the redesign is not growing on me. I hope Apple sorts this out in the next few months.

In practice, you probably use 3rd party apps, which might bias your opinion of the OS as a whole. Possibly.

This is so much better than iOS7 that Apple should be embarrassed.