Caps lock is definitely improved, but shift/no-shift is still confusing because everything is grey or black & white. With shift on, the key is now black on white - it's just like all the letter keys, so it's still not obvious whether that means on or off. When it's off, it's white on grey - different from most of the other keys, so does different mean on? Or off? At a glance, it's not clear, so it forces the user to stop and think and which colors mean what. Bad UI as usual!
At least in iOS 6 there was a white "halo" effect to make it clear that the key was on. Off was clearer too because the arrow was just a white outline on otherwise all grey.
Would it kill Apple to bring back some of the blue to make things much, much clearer? Or make the actual letters lowercase or uppercase depending on state of the shift key (oh wait, can't do that since Android does it!). They seem to be hell-bent on keeping the look as minimalist as possible, much to the detriment of the user experience. So much for that reputation for good user interfaces... :roll eyes:
For those of you hoping for great things in 7.1 (or just fixes for 7.0 blunders), don't. As far as I can tell, these betas have simply tweaked visual components here and there without any substantive changes. Every complaint I have about 7.0 (and none of them have to do with the new "flat" look except where usability is concerned - as above) is still there in 7.1 beta 5. Since Apple refuses to communicate real release notes, we have no idea what has changed other than a few graphic tweaks.
Seems pretty clear that their "A" team is rushing to get 8.0 ready for next summer, while the "B" team screws around and makes insignificant updates to 7. So ultimately, none of the real issues get fixed.
