> With iOS 7, Apple took a step backward and started letting others lead.

What do you mean by that? iOS 7 saw the introduction of a new design, with new design language, created entirely by Apple rather than mimicking other companies. Superficially it may appear more similar to other companies because of the loss of skeuomorphism, but once you look past the fact that it's flatter than before, it's still quite distinct from Microsoft and Google and everyone else. So given all that, what does "letting others lead" mean?

> suddenly everyone had a flat boxy design

Apple's design is flatter than before, but it's not flat. If anything, the blur and parallax create an even deeper design than it was when it was skeuomorphic. Microsoft is definitely going with the very flat design. Google's new design language I haven't looked at very much, but I think it's safe to say it's relatively flat as well, though probably not as flat as Microsoft.

> Meanwhile Apple had lost Steve Jobs and fired Scott Forstall, the two people who were pro skeumorphism and would have never allowed Apple to go down that path

I find it rather distasteful to invoke the memory of Steve to try and make a point like this. Did you know Steve personally? I doubt it. Similarly, I doubt you can predict what he would have done. Steve was rather (in)famous for his ability to change his mind and do things he'd previously said would never happen. Without Forestall, I think it's quite possible that Jony could have convinced Steve to go with the new design.

As for Forestall, yes, he would have never let this happen. But that's usually considered to be a point against Forestall, not a point for him. The Mac / iOS dev community, and the wider tech press, generally had the opinion that Apple kept going with skeuomorphism for much longer than they should have, and that it was Forestall's fault, and that the ousting of Forestall was a change for the good. So I find it quite odd to see you implying that Forestall's ousting was a bad move.

> A lot of people liked the skeumorphic designs.

Who are these people? Serious question here.

Skeuomorphism is generally considered a good thing to have when introducing new interaction metaphors. It allows people to recognize the widget and instinctively know how to manipulate it. See a button? Push it. A slider? Slide it. Etc. But skeuomorphism is also considered to hold back design and be visually clunky and distracting once users have learned to feel natural with the interaction. This can be seen time and time again in the evolution of GUI platforms. Take for example Mac OS X. The original OS X was full of skeuomorphic touches, such as the very blobby shadowed buttons. And successive versions of OS X slowly kept reducing it, removing the visual distractions, removing the excess skeuomorphism. It was a slow evolution, but if you go back and look at screenshots of OS X 10.0, and try to imagine a new platform introducing that look today, it should be obvious that it would be widely ridiculed.

The iPhone introduced a brand new interaction metaphor to the general population. Yes, the technology existed before, but almost exclusively stylus-based, mimicking desktop OS interaction, and only used by a fraction of the population. The iPhone was, almost everyone, their first experience with handheld touchscreen devices (and many of those hadn't used stylus-based devices either). Beyond the novelty of actually touching the screen, Apple also had to come up with new gesture-based interactions that they had to teach users. In this context, skeuomorphism is very useful. It makes it obvious to users what can be tapped or dragged or swiped. But as the years went by, and as every other smartphone manufacturer immediately started copying Apple, the skeuomorphism became a hindrance. People didn't need the visual affordance to tell what was a tappable button anymore, or to understand that the colored navigation bar at the top was a distinct UI element from the content below it. Skeuomorphism outlasted its utility, and thus, once the last holdout (Forestall) was gone, it was excised from the OS.

You can certainly argue they went to far in some cases. For example, the navigation bar buttons lost their borders and just became text. Was that a mistake? Well, that's a highly subjective question. But from a usability perspective, it certainly seems like it wasn't, since everyone has already learned that content on the left and right edges of the navigation bar is tappable.

> Not to mention textures work way better than transparent colors when you're watching, say, a video with a white background so you can't even see the controls.

What are you talking about? The OS-provided video controls are displayed on top of a neutral grey background (with blur). This is easily readable no matter the video content. The only video player that comes to mind that might have this issue is the YouTube app, which uses custom controls (which has no relation to the OS design).

> Oh and hey, try swiping up from the bottom in the Camera app - Whoops!

Whoops? What whoops? It behaves exactly like I thought it would; the little arrow control shows up indicating that a second swipe will pull up Control Center. That's exactly what I expected to happen, since the Camera app hides the status bar. And in the Camera Roll it brings up Control Center with a single swipe, since the status bar is visible there.

What are you seeing that elicited the "whoops"?

> And what's with the puke neon green for status bars during phonecalls that you can hardly read white text on?

I hope you aren't seeing "puke green", because if so you might need your eyes checked. As for reading text, that's fairly hyperbolic. White text isn't as readable as it is on a black background, but it's still quite readable. I just tried it out, and the text was just as readable on that green background as it is across most of the OS. Besides, what are you actually trying to read on it? The only text on it besides the status bar is "Touch to return to call".

> What's with the complete breakage of the browser UI with a subsequent "minimal-ui" apology all of which is then reverted back in iOS 8?

I have no idea what you're referring to here. Can you elaborate?

> For that matter, sending group messages in apps is still horribly broken since iOS 7.

I don't know what you're talking about here either. It works fine for me and everyone I know (and we use group messages a lot).

> And iOS 8.1 was a disaster and was recalled quickly.

What are you talking about? Perhaps you're referring to 8.0.1, which was replaced a day later by 8.0.2? The issue with 8.0.1 has not even the slightest shred of relation to design.