I personally saw no need at all for the redesign of the UI. The incremental changes were fine for me. There WERE some nasty UI fails from the Forstall days (the podcasts app being one of them), but a simple backing away of that into something more usable, would've been just fine.
Not to say that iOS 6 and some of the skeuemorphic crud that carried over into OS X were perfect (felt backgrounds? Ripped sheets in Calendar? That
horrible font in the notes app?), but toning down or removing those would've made things great as they were. The iOS7 flat redesign was a massive overreaction, and Apple listened too hard to a few users with ADHD who kept bellyaching that they were "bored" with the look and feel.
Even having said that though, I don't
mind the new look. I'm annoyed that the changes were drastic enough that a learning curve was required to figure out the changes, even if it was a short curve. And I'm annoyed that so much effort was spent on the UI that bugs weren't addressed enough, and even so I still have to wonder what the team wasted so much time on for such a simple looking UI that
can apparently be replicated in MS Word.
But, even though I'm annoyed, I do still like iOS7, and wouldn't want to go back.