I'd say it is stagnant because when you look at the design, it just feels old. I'm not much of a designer, I can't tell you why, but it just seems dated. Perhaps it is the skeuomorphism, maybe something else, but something is off about it now.
What's amazing is that an original iPhone and iPhone 5 look and feel largely identical for basic uses, even though the latter is a far more capable device. That's a testament to the strength of the original design.
this is the same thing thats spouted by fans of the iphone. We don't need a smaller ipad 10" is the perfect size. We don't need a bigger phone screen, this fits the perfect size for all hands. All this is said till Apple actually does it.
The only "bad" design elements, in my opinion, were notifications and Siri. They fixed notifications but I had to turn Siri off.
And I think Apple is betting on a "conservative" majority that does not want change for the sake of change (I'm certainly part of it) - just observe how similar all the iPhones look, or all the laptops, displays... The only exception I can think of are the cheaper iPods.
(1) Maps is probably the biggest thing they've done since the original phone's launch;
(2) they are moving more and more of the interaction to voice every year;
(3) they are moving more and more of the users' data to the cloud every year.
Since the very sentence I was responding too was about apps ("iOS is stagnant, reviews of recent Apple designed skeuo-heavy apps bemone the lack of functionality") I fail to see how talking about app functionality is some huge leap of logic on my part.
"he was talking about visual design and interaction. None of the things you list here are in that domain"
How is voice control not about interaction?
1 - replaced what they already had and then moved it up to feature parity with the competitors
2 - pioneered it then let it sit, is Siri really that much better and personally assisting me today then at launch?
3 - which appears to be only a response to the competition's great cloud integration
perhaps stagnation is too strong a word... tread-milling perhaps?
Most people, though, just want to use technology to accomplish other things. For them, radical interface changes reduce rather than improve value.