While the old iOS look was getting a little cheesy by the time iOS 6 rolled around, it was indeed very clear for the most part. Wooden bookshelves in iBooks mig

While the old iOS look was getting a little cheesy by the time iOS 6 rolled around, it was indeed very clear for the most part. Wooden bookshelves in iBooks might not have had much function, but the shading and glassy look on controls certainly did. As an example, coming from the angle of an individual who'd never approached a smartphone in his life, the function of the iOS 6 picker/spinner was immediately obvious. The shading and glassy highlights made it look like a real spinner and practically begged the user to interact with it. Distinct section separators made it perfectly clear that each section can be spun separately. Compare this to the picker in iOS 7 and up. Not only is there no shading or highlights to suggest how to interact with it, but now there are no separators — even if one presumes that it can be spun, it looks like the whole thing would spin. To make things worse, oddly skeumorphic 3D perspective has been added into the mix, presumably to try to suggest spinnability, but without partner cues it's just confusing. With this design, so much is left unknown until the user attempts interaction. Reference screenshot: http://blog.ittybittyapps.com/images/posts/lifting-the-lid-on-ios-7s-uipicker/UIDatePickerComparison.jpg http://blog.ittybittyapps.com/images/posts/lifting-the-lid-o... I personally feel that Apple struck a nice balance between design modesty, usability, and aesthetics with Mavericks desktop, but that's gone with Yosemite. Interestingly though, El Capitan adds in subtle hints of shading and depth in a few places. I wonder if we'll see things start to tilt back in the other direction with OS X 10.12 and iOS 10.