Changing or Innovating?

Ever since I upgraded to iOS 10 (unwillingly, but wanted to test drive someone's private beta product (sidenote: I think it was worth it)) , I've been frustrated, primarily because for the first time it felt like some things were 'changes,' rather than 'innovations' and even worse than that -- they were just 'change for change's sake' -- and changing UX that iOS had been conditioning into my behavior for years and without IMO a compelling reason.

This great post from UXDesign.cc does an amazing job covering the issues that I have been bothered about -- swiping from the lock screen.

For years, Apple has taught us to swipe right in order to unlock your phone. It's automatic. And then suddenly overnight, not only does it not do that -- it provides access to iOS widgets that many of us have already determined aren't 'mission critical' functionality.

This is extremely frustrating.

It feels like a change for change's sake -- not one that is an iterative innovation and without a doubt 'better.'

The other change they made that I find infuriating is swipe down from the top of any screen. This used to have a purpose that could serve you perfectly based on your own preferences.

Swipe down to either see widgets or your notifications, but it would remember your preference and then let you toggle between the two with additional side swiping.

Now, it always shows you notifications, which personally for me is of much lesser value in how I've configured my device to work for me.

Those little changes are infuriating because they clearly aren't catering to the informational relationship I've (along with a lot of others) have developed with my device and in fact are overwriting them, informing me that

' You were wrong. It should be like this. This is better.'

Frankly, it's not better and in fact -- I really dislike it. But I've got no choice.

To me, it also signals a bigger problem. When 'the revolutionary' (and it's easy to argue iOS was revolutionary) starts making changes at this level with such lower impact, it's the end of an era. Hopefully not the end of the innovation but it doesn't look good.