Explaining the Varying Designs of iOS 7 Icons
If the icons of iOS 7 look disjointed to you, there might be a reason for it. According to an exclusive report by The Next Web, Jony Ive, Apple’s SVP of Design, had the marketing team choose the color palettes and basic look of the icons, then passed each icon off to the respective app teams to finish. In other words, too many cooks… The good news is that the look of iOS 7 is reportedly far from done, so we anticipate a more coherent design by release.
Basically, Apple is moving away from human interface guidelines. The new icons are not "intuitive" so a cheatsheet will be required for first time users. Bottomline: the icons suck.