iOS 7

I have to say I really looked forward to this release. I think that the new design is the right way to go and I never was fond of the leathery and woody look of the old one. The worst apps in my opinion here were iBooks and Find My Friends. So the first impression of iOS 7 was good. Nice and clean. But here is the problem. It is to clean in some ways.

Spin Wheels

You now have trouble to identify a spin wheel if there is one and the the different wheels are not separated anymore.

Buttons

It's difficult to identify a button because now it's all text. I had several moments where I just didn't know how to get back or edit something. The pre 7 iOS did a great job here why abandon it completely?

Safari

The space from the new design for the webpages is great and the UI elements don't feel distracting which I really like. The cover flow multitasking is good and allows quick access.

What is not intuitive is how you access the UI elements while browsing. Is it a small swipe down or a longer one? I always struggle here.

Searching a site is absolutely horrible. First you have to delete the address field and then you have to remember to scroll down to find the results on the page you were searching.

Besides the cleanness there are the unnecessary things. These are only show, add no functionality and so the overall Baushaus motto "Form follows function" does not apply.

Parallax effect

Seriously? What has this to do with the great Bauhaus motto "Form follows function"? It doesn't give the user any benefit and sucks out battery power. And worst of all it looks cheesy.

Animations

Here again: No benefit and after a day pretty annoying because it feels slow till an app opens. I don't want that a productivity device steals my time with unnecessary zooming and panning.

Multitasking

At first it looked better and more comfortable. And indeed switching apps is better and faster because you can see the content of the apps. Unless you want to end a bunch of them. Even in pre iOS 7 it was annoying tapping on the minus symbols but it only was tapping and not swiping. So in the end it takes longer to end all apps.

Control Center

This is a great feature. It is very practical and I use it all day. Mostly to turn on or off the airplane mode or the flashlight. But Apple why did I had to wait 7 releases for this feature?

Performance

With a iPhone 5 it is very good and slick. The iPad mini is ok, not as slick as the iPhone 5 though.

What is unacceptable is the speed and performance with the iPhone4. This device is stuttering and slow and barley usable.  And I really do not understand why this got through the approval process by Apple. If that is how their QA department is working they really need to change that. It might change with a couple of updates but with version 7.0.4 my advice is: Do not update and stay with iOS 6.