The new ios 7, from apple

10 examples of better iOS7 native app icons

If it’s this easy, what the hell happened?

Apple would welcome the effusive praise it’s been receiving from the internet no matter what they’d unveiled this week. I mean, they could have presented a fruit at the WWDC as though it were their own invention to a standing ovation.

We’d have read on Mashable about the ‘smart, colour chaging protective layer’ that lets you know when it’s gone bad, a video of a handsome twenty something leaving a library with one in hand, even a screenshot of a pie chart boasting ‘2X vitamin C’ .

We’re so used to not seeing them put a foot wrong that when they do, you start to doubt yourself. Maybe I’m the problem?

Unfortunately they have royally screwed up their design and it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.

It’s the native app icons. They’re awful. Let’s not even get into the ‘subjectivity-of -art’ discussion when we’re staring blankly down the barrel of garish, neon-gradiented clip-art.

Designers all over the globe have taken to Photoshop in creative protest, to show just how easy it is not to screw this whole thing up. The result is a collection of alternatives, some slightly tweaked, and some vastly different, but all better. The likes of which are no doubt sitting in a recylcle bin at Cupertino ready to be abandonded for good.

I’m not mad, Apple, I’m just disappointed. Now let’s see what you could have won!