I'm not an Apple user, so I have no direct skin in this game — aside from recent moves by Google (with "Material Design") that have generally (a) made things look prettier, but (b) introduced some of the design issues discussed to the Androidverse.
Originally shared by +David Newman:
I think every user of Apple devices has known for a while that Apple software is becoming less and less usable. This article makes clear just how bad the problem is. I wonder if some start-up could get some traction in the market by emphasizing usability.
How Apple Is Giving Design A Bad Name
For years, Apple followed user-centered design principles. Then something went wrong.
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Material design, and the attempt to unify everything into it, has been a huge step backwards in design quality. The main reason is the same as the ones described herein: an emphasis on minimalism and unified appearance over usability, discoverability, and recovery.
+Gary Roth I think there are some advantages to the principle of a unified design, and Google's previous "Hey, let's throw together an app and release it to the wild" led to some less than useful app interfaces.
But I agree that where the design isn't helping, and actually hurting, usability, it's bad design.
And let's not forget their litigation over innovation phase.