Apple Worm

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.

The release of iOS7 surprised many for its sea change in design.

Most notably, the three-dimensional effect of icons that we’ve grown to know and love across Apple products have been flattened into 2D primary color icons.

In other words, the gloss is gone.

But instead of having app developers redesign their icons for iOS7, “iOS 7 seems to have a hammer built-in that is flattening existing apps.”

What this means is that the software cannot translate the old style of apps and logos, and instead translates them to the new look—which is pretty cool.

It’s a subtle form of software evolution that is able to take 3rd-party apps that haven’t made the design change and bring them up to speed.

flat is the new black