Given the move in iOS 7 to less representational and a more abstract, simplified aesthetic, I was surprised at one development. I took a screenshot on an iOS 6 device to compare against what I saw in an iOS 7 screenshot, and the alert notifier — the tiny little clock-that-doesn’t-tell-time in the upper-right that lets you know you have a daily alarm armed and ready — in the newer version is only more clock-like, having acquired little knobs along its top.

Presumably these little knobs are meant to be alarm bells, relating the icon explicitly to the alarm and not the clock, but I find it an unnecessary distraction to have my eyes tickled by those little bumps every time I see them, versus the simplicity of the clock-that’s-not-actually-a-clock.

Still, it’s one of the only places I’ve seen so far in iOS 7 where the design did not move more toward the abstract.