iOS7 icons

I'm not won over by the new iOS7 icons, though overall iOS7 does look like a step in the right direction. My personal views for each icon are below;

The FaceTime icon, and Message icons are all green, hurray! They convey their function, although now that FaceTime can execute voice only i have a problem with the icon being a camera, better to combine with the phone icon and have something like the Message app does for cell and wifi by using different colours to represent how the call is being made.

The new Passbook icon doesn't convey itself as a ticket holder i get no sense of its purpose from the new icon.

The mail icon looses its shadows and feels poorer than the old icon, although i'm not upset about loosing the clouds - what has mail got to do with the sky anyway? Better surely to have the @ symbol, we all know what that means now.

The new photos icons doesn't displease me, nor do the maps, calculator or calendar icons. Although I sympathise with older users that the new thinner font is harder to read. 

The new Safari icon is a push too far. Before you could tell what it was. A compass, with the world map in the background. The early internet having been frequently imaged as a world, the compass allowing for the navigation. The new icon looses that completely. Now its just a reflection of its former self. It doesn't function as a compass because its not drawn realistically anymore, anyone new to the platform will not get this icons relationship to browsing the web.

The new Notes icon is boring.. No way around that one. Sorry.

Stocks - black? - did we run out of ideas? Feels like change for the sake of change with no improvement. I'm trying to find a link here - why did this have to be black??

The App store and iTunes store icons don't feel quite as rich as before, but i don't mind them.

The clock icon - why bother with the change? Again change for the sake of it with no improvement. 

The reminders icon is emparrasing - i'd rather stick with the old icon, but equally how about a tick.. Just one large tick.

The newsstand icon - again, awful. The poorest of all the new icons. Someone said if you have to use text in an icon you didn't draw it well enough.. Well this was drawn badly four times.

The new music icon is a poorer copy of its richer father.

The videos icon - Having a video icon pretend to be a clapper without having a hinge is therefore not a functioning clapper is a half hearted effort. Get rid of the clapper completely, go for something more modern that represents movies like the frame effect.

Gamecenter - bubbles doesn't bother me massively but I'm not keen on the large area of white, why not have the whole area be the bubble?

Contacts - very grey - surely part of the world of communications and therefore should be a tinge of green?

The compass icon - one of the better icon repalcements - but a little dark to see the detail

The camera icon. I honestly prefer the lens icon, but i can now see that if you want to re-use the same icon throughout the interface when accessing the camera then ok, but the iOS6 icon is richer no doubt.

Also another thing to consider. will the icons be standardised in OS X Mavericks? They certainly were not in the demos we saw during WWDC.

It exciting to see the direction Apple is taking. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt for now, but i hope some more attention to detail on the icons in future.

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