A few pixels here and there, and iOS 7 is beautiful (opens in new tab)

Reading that page gave me an acute case of adjectivitis. Just the first sentence contains 4 adjectives:

'Apple finally revealed its highly anticipated iOS 7 operating system, dramatically redesigned by legendary designer Jony Ive.'

Followed by:

'It’s stunning.'

I notice this writing - and speaking - style occurs frequently by those enamoured by Apple products, probably a result of listening to a few too many Jobs speeches. It is also rather distracting in that it makes it hard to take the message for granted as it comes across more like religious fervour than objective thought. May I suggest ditching the adjectives for a more toned-down style?

These articles are largely pointless, since taste is subjective.

For instance, I find a few of Leo's icons to look slightly better and a few to look slightly worse. Going down the page, JustD's, Zane's, and Ida's icon sets look worse overall, in my opinion.

Nah, how can you say those icons are just plain ugly and then based on a light modification say they're almost beautiful. Yes the new version on the right is better, but it's in the same category, it's nothing too drastic. The OS is fine, it'll pick up, people just hate sudden change. (I don't even use an iphone maybe thats why it doesn't bother me that much)

It's interesting how designers prefer the weather icon gradient the other way around, even though the original direction is true to nature. I think it shows some tendency towards conformity with classic button shading, consistent with the way everyone dialled back the color saturation.

The extra padding in icons and the smaller button radii really do work better though.

Another Control Center suggestion http://dribbble.com/shots/1109305-iOS-7-Control-Center-Reima...

What's disappointing to me about most of the Dribbble redesigns is that they don't question Apple's choices more. Instead of questioning whether four spheres is even the proper metaphor for Game Center, they just focus on beautifying the 4 spheres that already exist. Any redesign that accepts the black and white stripes on the Video icon without question is a failed one in my opinion.

Saffad using opacity to separate Control Center sections is an awesome improvement. It's awkward that in the iOS 7 promotional video they say that "iOS 7 is a clear representation of these goals", and then the first screen they show is Control Center with the overwhelming dividers.

I like the iOS 7 icons. I think they look nice and fresh.

Somewhat OT: A few years ago I was really into customizing my desktop and remember falling in love with much of David Lanham's [1] work. Most icons and "skins" and whatnot, from WinAmp to Mac OS X, were about maximum gloss and 3d effects I guess because people were finally free from all the '90s clay-like UIs. His stuff stood out though, and one of my favorite icon sets was his Sticker set. Not quite the same but in a way it feels like that style just 'grew up'.

[1] http://dlanham.com/ [2] http://iconfactory.com/freeware/preview/stkr

Winterboard anyone? There are dozens of themes similar to iOS7's and they have been available for years. Nothing new here, move along.