A way to think about it is that iOS 7 gets closer to real world interaction. You don't press a button to sit in your chair, you just sit on it because you know how to do it.
A microwave oven might be a better example, since a chair is inert.
On a microwave one has to have discoverable controls. Imagine if everything was just flat with the fascia, looking no different in presentation to the maker's logo.
It might say 'Cooking power: 80%' with no indication of how to adjust. Apparently, though, if you press on the word 'power' repeatedly you can change it!
I don't think we'd accept that.
You explanation is just the contrary, you press the + button because you have tried to push it without knowing what will do.
If you are trading ease of use / lower learning curve for reduced 'visual clutter' (which is pretty subjective, personally I liked the card with the + symbol) I am not sure you made the right trade-off.
And this was one of the things people criticised Android, lack of intuitivity.
Average Joe users that I know (that just happened to buy new computers after Win8 came out) are going insane every day to this day about their "behated" Win8 experience.
If anything, Win8 has driven even more casual non-power users to Android tablets... rather than to WinRT, that is ;)
This mindset is the antithesis of good usability. OP admits the old graphic worked because it's immediately understandable, then throws the baby out with the bathwater in pursuit of some concept of visual perfection that doesn't exist.
He dedicated almost a page to writing about the parallax effect. Really? The parallax effect? Translucency? Just like in Windows Vista? These things (exactly as they are) would be seen as nothing more than a gimmick on Android or other operating systems, and the same people praising Apple so much for them, wouldn't give them a second thought.
It's the same effect that helped Siri seem "real" for the first couple of years, and only now they are just waking up to the fact that it's mostly a gimmick. It's like the reality distortion field has made a comeback - or maybe it never disappeared.
