With the exception of the single number-bubble, iOS icons don't include dynamic information on them, and therefore aren't regularly changing in appearance. The

With the exception of the single number-bubble, iOS icons don't include dynamic information on them, and therefore aren't regularly changing in appearance. The icon to run the photo viewer in WP7 appears to consist entirely of a thumbnail of an image from your photo album. That means that every time you take a new photo, the image changes. Your contact list application itself contains a grid of thumbnails of contact photos, which is a superfluous feature, and may cause a lot of confusion if other applications also contain a grid of content thumbnails. Pushing information onto tiles is itself one of the key usability problems with WP7. The controls that you interact with to invoke functions should not do double-duty as general-purpose info delivery systems. Apple gets this right; the ability of controls to convey information is limited to conveying state information that indicates whether/when you need to interact with the control itself, and the shape, placement, coloring, and imagery of the control don't change for trivial reasons. I understand the visual appeal of the Metro UI, but ultimately, this is supposed to be a functional user interface, not a Mondrian print.