“Are you ready to join the future? That seems to be the subtext of every tech presentation of the 21st century, but for Apple, acknowledged leaders in the field, there has been a nagging feeling that its users were already there, waiting for it to catch up,” Steve Rose reports for The Guardian.
“At its Worldwide Developers Conference presentation of its new iOS7 user interface on Tuesday, Apple finally cottoned on, by cutting ties with the design principle that has so often held it back: skeuomorphism,” Rose reports. “Originally this was to help us neanderthals make sense of the dazzling new technology before us, as in: “Oh, I get it. That looks like a button, so I’m meant to push it.” But Apple got skeuomorphism-drunk, plastering the screens of its futuristically minimal devices with incongruous faux wood, leather and green baize. It got ugly.”
Rose reports, “Steve Jobs was allegedly a fan of skeuomorphism, as was iOS creator Scott Forstall; Apple’s design chief Jony Ive wasn’t, and legions of fans sided with him in what became an intense ‘skeuomorphic v flat’ debate. Following Forstall’s departure last year, the flatties seem to have won the day… But rather than old-school flatness, iOS7 gives you layers of flatness that float on top of one another”
Read more in the full article here.
