IOS 7 and 8 are all but flat. Translucency instead of shadows, but still. The iOS design needs to be perfected in many ways, but I think that the not-complete-flatness was nailed from the get go.
All are an improvement over previous designs, but I don't think complete flatness is very practical.
Something I'd like them to "fix" in material for the next version of Android/style guide is how to combine colors. I think all 3 platforms have issues with this. In Android 5 there are some colors combined that don't make sense (I think the least favorite is the green icons in Settings). In iOS7/8 I've seen apps that basically use a dozen different colors in their apps, and for Metro I've noticed a lot of times that third-party developers but also Microsoft itself choose really ugly colors.
Unfortunately you can't really control the way third party devs will adhere to your design Guidelines. Under iOS, at least, it's easier to notice a general common sense, especially for the most used and popular apps.
Material design really is great, and for that reason it's a shame that's gonna be inevitably wasted by:
- third party customization by the manufacturers
- fragmentation of iOS version on android devices, especially in the entry level market
- huge flocks of developers with no sense of design at all
-internal fragmentation by the too many Google product team themselves
Looking at the design per-se, you may be right about its superiority to iOS design, but this stuff doesn't live in a vacuum.
Yes, of course, but Google could at least advise them as best as they can - do that UI/UX research so the developers don't have to, and so on.
At the end of the day, they can still only be "best practices". but developers can and sometimes should create their own unique designs. The other 90 percent of them can simply "copy" Google's style guide, and still have their apps look great.
