Magpie Apple plunders the competition for cosmetics, as egos run wild

Familiar

It wasn't unexpected the direction they'd be going. They'd really backed themselves into a corner, and WP8/Android were showing that functionality beats pretty UI's that need extra clicks.

The Notification bar, the quick settings, it's obvious that Apple have sat down with everything out there and /really/ looked carefully at it, probably had meetings on what to take it, improve it, and make it look 'appley' but it's incredibly obvious to anyone who looks at them where the ideas are coming from.

And that's ok! It really is! Palm had some great ideas too, as can be seen by the switcher.

But...

You know deep down every iPhone user is going to look at this and think "well, they kept telling me this was better than the competition for all those years, and that they were copying MY phone, but now they're copying them and... I just feel uncomfortable. What else do other phones do better?"

Then again, maybe it'll get a few others to re-look at iPhones and say 'oo, nice hardware and now a nice OS that works like i'm used to'.

Shame they're going to Bing though, to get away from Google, they're once again willing to break their functionality. Unless they think Bing's good enough now. But as bad as Google may be perceived to Apple, have they REALLY forgotten how Microsoft works?

Shows an Apple that's following, following, racing around, sniffing for clues. And at last, the general press seems to be aware that the smoke and mirrors are just that.

They had to do it.......

....just because its "that" time of the month. St. Jobs used to do it, so thay have to do it. So anything goes, to keep up the tradition.

Next year will be the same, mark my words.

Nothing revolutionary is coming out.

Would be nice to see some lawsuits flyiing about copying/ripping ! The year will pass interestingly.

Guesses

Since the top left icon has what looks like switches on it, I'm going to guess it's for "settings".

The top right icon has rectangles that look like the iPhone itself, but in different colors. So that's likely to be "personalization".

The bottom left icon seems to be a sort of color wheel, so it may have to do with choosing colors too, even though that ought to be covered in "personalization".

But you're absolutely right that people shouldn't have to guess like that; instead, there should be legends under the icons so that people know what they're doing.

Meanwhile Stephen Fry professes his love of iOS 7 via twitter.

So it must be good then. :)

Conspicuous ornamentation has been stripped away

What exactly are the parallax wallpaper effect and rain and snow falling on the weather app, if not "Conspicuous ornamentation"?

How could Apple end up with THIS as their best effort? It is without doubt the worst UI design I have seen in a long time. Where did they find the designers? In some dark corner of an insane asylum? I almost want to apologize to Steve Ballmer, cus Windows 8 now seems beautiful.

There are only so many ways to do something. If Apple is improving their product by including them and there are no patent issues, what's the problem? I think the current Android, Blackberry and Windows phone devices owe more to the original iPhone than vice versa.

Copying

Your entire sentiment that Apple copying other companies is something new is laughable. Jobs was NOTORIOUS for ripping off other companies ideas, then pretending he invented the idea. Remind us all again what amazing new innovations Jobs released over the last 3 years of his tenure. Siri? Bought from another company. Maps? Broken. Spaces on OSX? Already existing in the various *nix environments for decades.

Fair comments, but....

Everyone seems so quick to point out the 'theft' from other device interfaces. Yet nobody seems to be concerned that Eric Schmidt ran away to Google after bagging a whole bunch of Apple ideas, which he then put straight into Android. So theft is fine as long as you are the first person to produce a device with the idea in use.

iOS 7 looks like Yahoo Weather

Coincidence?

Erm, it's a phone OS. It doesn't matter.

Honestly, mobiles phones are the new religions of this world. How long before someone suicide bombs an Apple or Google office because they didn't like what they were doing?

"Ripping off" is a subjective matter

You accuse Apple of ripping off other companies' work - mostly Windows "Metro" interface with a smattering of Blackberry and Android rip-offs thrown in. But are they really? I read an article yesterday that suggested that Jon Ives already had the idea for a flatter UI back in 2005 - which would be way before "Metro" was a glimmer in Microsoft's eye. I dug it up and leave it to your "objective" eye to decide:

http://www.cultofmac.com/231140/ios-7s-flat-icons-are-a-blast-from-the-past/

With respect to Apple ripping-off the "layering" GUI elements of BlackBerry - that's also questionable. Z-ordering of GUI elements has been part of computer science even when I was in college (that would be the late '80s), so the fact that Apple did something with it doesn't mean they ripped off anybody. Similarly the card-layout for quick task switching. This graphical way of representing tasks isn't something Blackberry invented (I vaguely remember an Apple product called "Hypercards" that may have used the metaphor in the early '80s....if that is not right, there were other instances I saw it and just can't remember).

You may have a good point with Apple ripping-off Android's "Notification Center". I don't know. But as with many things, there aren't a heck of a lot of ways on a small, 2-dimensional screen to "notify" someone unobtrusively. I think anybody given that task would come up with something similar to Android's. It just makes sense - you don't have to copy Android to come up with the same thing.

You mention Air drop being old hat (Lion users already had it) - but leave out that it's been made much easier to take advantage of via the share sheets.

Your article's main thrust, though, is that Apple isn't innovating and that shareholders should be wary. You back up your opinion with the above-mentioned "ripping off", but leave out evidence that counters your opinion! From where I sit, the new Power Mac appears very innovate. The new power management features in the new version of Mac OSX seems very innovative. What other operating system has the memory compression mechanism they talked about? That alone will allow me to hopefully ring more usefulness out of my 8GB system that needs to swap pages to disk/SSD because of the workload I put on it. There was talk of Siri's "No eyes" integration in many cars in 2014 - that, while perhaps not "innovative" is definitely a good sign for investors. You write off the new music service as a "me too" product. But from an investment perspective, this new product is a VERY GOOD thing: (1) by putting a one-click "buy" button next to every song that is being played, Apple will make a ton of money and (2) it is yet another reasons for people to go to Apple (or to stay with Apple) because it has the most useful features OUT OF THE BOX.

With regards to Apple not having to announced a new iPhone at MWDC: Management decided to move iPhone introductions to to the fall. They're not allowed to do that, just because Steve did it in June? Since the last two iPhones came in October and September, you'd have an argument if the next iPhone didn't arrive by then. That it didn't arrive by MWDC means nothing.

that's not a microphone

someone has dropped an enormous aspirin caplet in your wine glass.

here's a thought - skeumorphic is out because icons don't have to emulate the materials the "originals" were made of. But when was the last time you say anyone outside of a radio studio or podcast use a big microphone like that. (telephone and computer headsets have delicate booms, mobile phones have a little slit in the case)

Wow, who would have thought that the mighty fruit would have to steal their new designs from everyone else especially from windows phone.

I am kinda annoyed and happy at the same time. Annoyed that they nicked so much stuff from so many other innovators and happy because copying is the sincerest form of flattery.

I wonder how the fanbois feel about windroid 7 on their iphones.