Skeuomorphism is making things look like real life things.

You know how Apple’s Game Center has that weird green felt background so that it looks like a card table in a seedy one-story Vegas casino?

That’s skeuomorphism.

Or the tan leather with stitching used for the Find My Friends app.

Scott Forstall was responsible for that at Apple. He created apps and a look that looked as close as possible to the real life things.

Everyone objected, he lost his job, and Apple did a 180 away from that look.

At the recent conference where iOS7 debuted, Craig Federighi, senior vice president of iOS software riffed on the since-departed Forstall’s design:

Look! Even without all that stitching, everything just stays in place.

It’s easy to make things want to look like things we already have. But why are we using technology to replicate instead of innovate? Forstall’s designs were clever, but they were too clever by half. Instead of being subtle homages to real-life textures, they looked like chintzy fake-wood paneling on a station wagon. It will be interesting to see how this new design direction thrusts Apple forward into the future.