Dane Baker observed that Apple blatantly ripped the Apple Watch fitness UI from Polar Clock.

Apple Watch and iOS 7 emerged from Same Apple Design Team

Many have been curious about this, it has now been confirmed that iOS 7 and Apple Watch were produced by the same team at Apple. It's not particularly surprising, but still interesting. Perhaps Ive is letting his vice-grip loosen ever so slightly.

The Critical Sharks series spurred a lot of community feedback, particularly from Part IV: Fear of Apple. Here's the roundup:

There is an unfortunate climate of fear in the software community today. It is primarily in ephemeral video interviews and podcasts that we get any semblance of coherent criticism and even then it is reticent. Worse than the fact that this criticism is relegated to verbal discussions is that it is later renounced by the very same designers and developers when they are interviewed in the more permanent-seeming medium of the written word. In written interviews, these fair-weather critics go on to reverse their opinions and praise the products of modern minimalist UI design because it is more convenient not to risk questioning powerful industry leaders.

In order to fortify their position and divert attention away from criticism, modern minimalist apologists have amassed a whole assortment of baseless arguments for dismissing visual design issues. If you find yourself in a discussion with a modern minimalist who makes any of the following fallacious arguments, you can safely assume...

Around the web, criticism of the modern minimalist catastrophe has been suppressed. A wise commenter under the pseudonym “.X.” described iOS 7 as follows, “It looks unprofessional and simplistic, like something a person without artistic skills would come up with.” He continued, “Anyone can make single-colored circles and squares without depth.” In response, Tim Shundo, Lead Designer at Circa—an app named Best App of 2013 by both Apple and Google, retorted: “I’m sorry I’m calling BS"...

The release of iOS 7 was the tipping point in bringing about the dominance of flat modern minimalism. In the wake of iOS 7’s radical redesign, without stopping to consider whether there may have been any genuine grievances being aired, many major industry figures decried the uproar of users who were uninterested in flat design.

Frank Chimero, the author of The Shape of Design asked both users and designers to “give it a second” in his iOS 7 reaction piece called “Generosity of Perspective.” The Design Director of Facebook, Julie Zhuo, warned us of the dangerous “Shark-Infested Waters of Design"...