That kind of thinking adds very few to the discussion. I respect Apple and I know they are a reference in terms of UI/UX. This does not mean however that they are immune to making mistakes. Your argument is, from what I understood, that as they are very good they must have thought of it and if they choose to do it anyway then it must be the best way. I do not agree.
Even for the message at the bottom of the screen there was more contrast before when the text was black. In a room it does not matter much but out, in the sun, you can tell the difference. Anyway, even if you read the most recent message most often than others (which is probably true) you often need to read the previous ones for context if the reply arrives some minutes or hours later. If you are out, previously you could read the last two or three messages without problems. No you have to scroll so that the previous message is under focus to be able to read. And what is there to be gained? Isn't the fact that older messages appear before the new ones not enough to hint about their order?
Again you raise the argument that Apple always knows best and therefore it's laughable that I point out such a thing. Of course Apple would never make such a mistake. Just look at both photos and ask yourself which one can you read best. Also look at screen of the (beautiful) weather app and see if you can check your signal or even the time[1].
Also do you think that yellow text on a light background is a good idea in terms of readability? Because that's the color of the "actionable" elements in the Notes app.
I posted it above but just to re-iterate if iOS 7 ships where background images render the status bar, text, etc, unreadable due to an obvious "white on white" or "black on black" issue, or at least if this isn't somehow addressed otherwise, then I will (figurtively :)) eat my hat.
I'd argue most of my beef with the armchair commentators is they are making what appear to be deep criticisms of iOS 7 without having actually used it, and without taking into account the fact that it's beta 1. They are shipping a new "letterpress" text treatment in UIKit, my guess is that they will apply this treatment to text if it is sitting on top of a similar-colored background, but probably have not worked out the details yet. I could see it being a reasonable technical and design challenge since you may need to apply a treatment to only part of a glyph. I'd ask the poster what their "duh, so obvious" solution is to their "duh, so obvious" observation. (Note: "leave the status bar alone" is not a valid answer here, since the design goal is to have the content in iOS 7 take up the entire screen. If you have a problem with that decision, argue that point, but realize it has nothing to do with status bars anymore. Even if Apple left this pretty glaring flaw in their design, they may have decided to do so because having content take up the entire screen is worth this cost, and the onus is on the critic to explain why it is not worth it, not that they are too stupid to have noticed this edge case.)
Basically if you see something and it's something that 99% of developers would identify as a potential edge case, you can be sure Apple considered it too and at least made an explicit design decision to deal with it or punt for later betas. If they made an explicit design decision, which is assumed, then you should try to understand that decision and then critique that decision and its tradeoffs beyond Comic-Book-Guy-esque "this is so obvious they are so dumb how could they miss my clever edge case I've discovered." Let's say Apple really do see that white on white is an issue, and actually decided to leave it that way and ignore the case altogether. Why would they do this? At least address this question if you are going to critique the design. The OP assumes it was an oversight, not a design decision or technical debt, which is kind of insulting to Apple designers and engineers.
I would prefer if before starting a complaint about text legibility, colors, contrast, and so on, if people would include a disclaimer of if they have actually based their opinions upon viewing the design on an actual device.
Even for the message at the bottom of the screen there was more contrast before when the text was black. In a room it does not matter much but out, in the sun, you can tell the difference. Anyway, even if you read the most recent message most often than others (which is probably true) you often need to read the previous ones for context if the reply arrives some minutes or hours later. If you are out, previously you could read the last two or three messages without problems. No you have to scroll so that the previous message is under focus to be able to read. And what is there to be gained? Isn't the fact that older messages appear before the new ones not enough to hint about their order?
Again you raise the argument that Apple always knows best and therefore it's laughable that I point out such a thing. Of course Apple would never make such a mistake. Just look at both photos and ask yourself which one can you read best. Also look at screen of the (beautiful) weather app and see if you can check your signal or even the time[1].
Also do you think that yellow text on a light background is a good idea in terms of readability? Because that's the color of the "actionable" elements in the Notes app.
[1] http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/ios7-app...