Every major Windows version change was preceeded by a list of minimum hardware requirements and we ALWAYS had a way back to the previous version.
I fully agree, I was fortunate in that I was able to revert back to 6.1.3 before they prevented you from doing so, I think it's totally unacceptable not to give users the democratic option to revert back if they wish. Why Apple prevent you from doing so after just 1 or 2 days instead of much longer or just a month would be better than nothing.
It was definitely slower, with noticeable lag when typing, and the lack of any colour made it look crap, I couldn't even see video titles because some idiot at Apple failed to realise that white text does not show up very well on white backgrounds, they also failed to realise that having so many white coloured screens has the negative effect of using more battery. I'm just thankful I managed to revert my iPad-3 back to 6.1.3.
When you have a good stable firmware operating system, only an idiot would change it so dramatically, besides the issue of the OS growing into bloat ware, forcing people to upgrade their iPads to later models, where previously their current iPads worked perfectly and IMO looked far better too.
And YES I did do a hard reset, after the update, as I always do. I suspect this is one iPad 3 that will never get updated past 6.1.3. My wife's iPad-1 still runs well on iOS 5.1.1 (the last firmware for iPad1)
Has she missed anything...not at all, and her home screen certainly looks far better than V7.
IMO it appears to me that Apple have lost their way somewhat, they should not take away the option of choice, we are all different, we like different colours, it's this freedom of choice that helps to make us different, and that's not a bad thing, but Apple gives us no choice at all.
I just hated the new colour scheme, and the icons looked rubbish, why they don't allow the user to choose their own scheme or individual colours I really don't know, instead of concentrating on gimmicks we don't need, they really need to concentrate on giving us the basics we do need.