?The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring.? - designer Paul Rand
Adam Lein at PocketNow has had Microsoft's number on this for a while now. He's been calling out Windows Phone on all the terrible conformist changes they were making to the OneDrive app and to other apps like SmartGlass which replace pivot navigation with generic hamburger button navigation. In his article
"8 ways to tell if your mobile app sucks" he explains why many Metro design principles worked better than what became popular early on with iOS and Android apps.
Basically he says button placement should always be at the bottom of the screen near your thumb, icons should be easily identifiable or have words underneath to help the user understand and should never use the same icon to do different things, introductory tutorials are a lazy crutch of bad design, landscape and portrait should always be supported. I would personally add that navigation of the app sections should be possible from any point or pixel on your app (ie. Metro pivoting, IE11 back/forward, photo viewing, etc.).
http://www.iphoneapptube.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/iPhone-6-Plus-Reachability.png
Apple's old UI creates problems for modern phones. Losing 1/2 your screen is not the solution.
I guarantee you that at Apple right now they realize that stupid "big screen" mode (where you lose half of your screen) is not a long term solution and the entire design language of iOS needs to be redesigned for modern 5" phone hardware. So in essence Microsoft is copying a design language who's expiration date is fast approaching. Apple will shift to an app design template that makes sense for a big screen phone just as Microsoft is adopting the old outdated template meant for 4" phones. Seeing Microsoft conform to their design is all the more incentive for Apple to switch gears now and make Microsoft look cluelessly behind the curve once again. It's a win-win situation for Apple, they get to fix their broken design language and make Microsoft look two steps behind.