Recent announcements at Apple got me thinking as to whether the sometimes derided skeuomorphic approach to much of their software will soon be a thing of the past with Jony Ive taking control of software as well as hardware in the new world.
It seems that I’m not the only person thinking that – see yesterday’s New York Times article. But here’s a thing… might the fashionistas and hipsters have got it all wrong? Might the mass market appeal of Apple products actually be the skeuo-whimsy that seems to dominate the user interface design of much of Apple’s software?
If everything is moved to the cold, hard lines that seem to inform much of Ive’s aesthetics, might that actually stop people desiring Apple’s products to the extent they do today? After all, after a while, the design of the device itself surely fades into the background as it’s the software that we actually interact with?
Put it another way: how many people prefer the Houses of Parliament to the South Bank Centre?
mmitII 