My apologies for posting facts that have been stated in this forum hundreds (thousands?) of times already. I just discovered this forum, and need to get this off my chest.
A few years ago, I bought an iPod Touch. It was so far advanced over anything I had owned before, I became enamored with Apple products. We bought 2 of every Apple device I could use, costing extra $$ in a number of cases, to make sure I got the Retina high resolution screen. Pictures, graphics, magazines - all in so wonderful a presentation that I could "reach in and touch" the subject.
I dropped Windows a couple of years ago, after discovering that Apple PCs were, indeed, worth all that extra cost. Faster, built to last, and of course - the fantastic Retina screen resolution.
Then something strange happened - I accepted the offer to upgrade to IOS 7 on my iPad. Excited to see what great new improvements had been made, I started browsing the Apple Apps. The more I searched, the worse it got....It must be a joke, right? They gave the design work to a fourth grader, and made him do it using only a black and white pencil and told not to create borders around data fields.
* I checked my mail. The wonderfully grey-shaded keyboard was gone. The new keyboard was almost all white, with the borders around the keyboard, and around each key, essentially gone. Very difficult to see, and use, with my limited eyesight.
* The Notes yellow pad icon which stood out on the screen, is gone. The new icon is a - what? An attempt to emulate the old network peacock? Opening Notes, I found that no longer did it have lines to make creating and reading notes easy. It is - Nothing - just a blank page. How UN-imaginative can one get?
* The icon for Newsstand, a clear bookcase, with my magazines sitting on the shelf, was gone. It took a while to find the new app icon. It's now a washed out blotch, with some sort of colors stuck inside it.
* The old Contacts icon, an image of a leather phone directory was gone. After some more searching, the new washed out icon is a sort of grey outline of a person?
* The Calendar icon went from a bold icon with today's date, to - wait for it --- yet another white, washed out icon. Totally dull and harder to find. Then I opened the calendar and found they didn't stop at the icon. The monthly calendar page again decided one didn't need border lines between the days. Just the days of the month, let the user figure out what separates them. Flat, dull, and totally unappealing. There's more, but I'll stop here.
So I have to ask. What Moron decided that they'll take the most advanced graphics tablet/PC available, and remove all the color and imagination from the IOS? Shouldn't someone get fired for letting this out into the world? With several thousand dollars invested in Apple products, I think I have a right to complain! I hear there may be some improvements in the IOS, but am so disappointed in Apple's decision in the graphics that I haven't looked for them. I tried to go back to IOS 6 a day later, only to discover that I waited a day too long! They had removed that capability.
I've trusted Apple in the past, and clicked on the upgrade button for upgrades without thinking twice. Never again. I caught this abomination in time to stop my wife from upgrading her iPad, and certainly didn't fall for the Mavericks OS on my Retina Macbook Pro. I did lots of googling, and found a few ways to help with the visual ability lacking in IOS 7 - increase contrast, etc.
I'm not old fashioned - I welcome changes which are improvements. These changes, IMHO, took a 5 year leap backwards. If the moderators wish to move or remove this rant, fell free. I'm crossing my fingers that Apple will come to their senses, and USE the high definition capabilities of their technology, not throw it out to appease some executive/engineer's misguided concept that no graphics is great graphics.
