Why would it be surprising? My experience with iOS 7 was a far more arduous climb than iOS 8 has been. Given the number of crashes and restarts I experienced with the early iterations of iOS 7, I would not call that smooth or consistent. Doesn't matter that the screen scrolls smoothly, if apps crash and the phone resprings constantly. iOS 8, even version 8.0, has produced comparatively few crashes and been free from random restarts. I would take that kind of stability tradeoff for a slight performance dip anytime, except that since iOS 8.0.2 my phone has performed every bit as well as it did under iOS 7.1.2.
Not upset at all. Just pointing out the fallacy of presuming to speak for everyone and "all devices" when nothing of what you claim applies to my experience and that of many others.
And Marco Arment posted this a day later.
http://www.marco.org/2015/01/05/popular-for-a-day
I don't think I'm being oblivious when I observe that iOS 7 crashed and restarted far more frequently than iOS 8 has, or that I don't notice any difference in performance or smoothness or what not when using iOS 8.1.3 compared to 7.1.2. The difference is that I'm not presuming to know what other people observe or should observe.
If you had written your original post about performance and the "so called 60 fps experience," I would not take issue with it. But, you were generalizing about iOS 7 running "significantly better" across all devices. And to that end, there are too many cases to the contrary to just let it go by without commenting.