I expect some lag and slowness from older devices that are running the latest OS, but considering iOS 8 has lagging problems on my 6 Plus its inexcusable. People defending iOS 8 saying that it isn't buggy remind me of the people who were defending Vista at the beginning. I don't care how you spin it iOS 8 is the worst major update ever pushed to devices and it shouldn't have left the testing chambers until it was ready. Consumers though are expecting OS upgrades yearly though, so Apple had to rush things.
I agree with the first part of your statement completely, however I do think getting rid of Forstall was a good call. Otherwise, iOS 7 and 8 would still look like iOS 6 and earlier.
I agree completely. People can't get this through their head. Their mindset is "iOS 5 is super slow on iPad 1, and iOS 4 is super slow on iPhone 3G, I'd rather use iOS 8 on an iPad 2 or iPhone 4S. Because of that, iOS 8 is fine." iOS of any version will be slow on any old device, period. So just because iOS 5 was slow on iPad 1 doesn't make it acceptable for iOS 8 to be slow on an iPad Air for example. I'd expect an iPhone 4S to be slowed to a crawl at this point, it's 4 years old, and that's ancient in terms of mobile technology.
The problem with iOS 8 is that there are performance issues on the top-of-the-line, or one year old products from Apple. Any A5 device or A6 device absolutely FLEW on iOS 6, no observable issues. However, an iPad Air or iPad mini 2/3 aren't exactly slow at performing tasks, but they stutter and lag quite heavily in several locations in terms of UI.
Now, with the new iOS 7-8 UI, I'm neutral to it. It's definitely nice and fresh, which is great, I'm all for it. iOS 6 was stale as hell. It's just that some design areas look messy to me. Also, another huge thing about the new design is that it's very stuttery and buggy, especially on iPads. They also took "flatness" way too far. I think they got it right with OS X Yosemite. ***There are still drop shadows***, the home screen looks nasty and messy sometimes because of how there's no distinction between the wallpaper and icons. The dock is also a little abrupt, I think, and it covers a bit too much of the wallpaper in my honest opinion. Maybe the blurring on it shouldn't be so intense, let the wallpaper show through more? Anyway, the Yosemite icons are flat and clean, but not necessarily a sheet of paper. They have an almost convex look to them. The option to have a dark mode is also awesome as well because the whites with iOS 7/8 can make things look a little stale and did I mention blinding?
There are bits of each design (iOS 6 vs iOS 7/8) that I love and hate. I think the main thing that was appealing about iOS 6 was the silky smoothness and "stability" of the animations. Things didnt get thrown off occasionally, weird things didnt just 'happen', things didn't drop frames much, if at all. It felt consistent. Where with iOS 8, I'm surprised sometimes if leaving an app doesn't bring a dropped frame(s) on my iPad mini 2. Also, I think iOS 6 just had a beautiful homescreen. I'm not a fan of how the icons and wallpaper melt together with iOS 7/8 and make everything look like a hot busy mess. However with iOS 7/8, Apple freed themselves. It seems like it would be easier to add in new features with a flat design and make it look non-ridiculous than with a skeuomorphic design if that makes any sense. Just imagine an iOS 6 control center. Anyway, the flat design is good overall, but it just needs several tweaks and some cleanup to really become great.
It seems like iOS 9 may bring some of this cleanup, as hinted by this rumor (Dark mode please?!?!?
). It could bring in little tweaks like how the headers and status bar looked different in iOS 6 that iOS 5 for example. In iOS 6 there was a smooth blue-gray gradient at the top in areas like settings and messages, not boxy, shiny, nasty bright gray (iOS 5 and earlier). Things were just generally cleaned up. I liked it. Would like to see some cleanup again. Anyway, I've been rambling way too long.