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Comment by weavie | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely. I don't get why skins fell out of style. I remember back in the day when I was working on an accounting app, even that I made skinnable. You may just be reconciling your bank account, but at least you could do it in a form that looked like it was made from marble, or wood, or whatever you wanted! It just made everything feel just a little bit less tedious... at least to me

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Apple's designers decided that looked tacky and stopped doing it; the rest of the industry soon followed suit. Now everything has to be floating in a screamingly bright white void, so that your phone ruins your night vision every time you pull it out.

(I may have opinions about this trend.)

At least when Trillian ditched skins, I think they were trying to compete with the bigger players (MSN, Google Chat) more seriously in the business world, and skinning isn't really something businesses care much about. In fact, just having this feature available can make the app seem more juvenile and less appealing than more "serious" alternatives.

Plus, you have to keep adding skin support for every new feature you add, which means the many skins that don't keep up will no longer work for the latest version of your app, which pisses off users. And when skins slow down or stop being made (people get bored, move on) it reflects poorly on the app, making it look like a ghost town.

> At least when Trillian ditched skins, I think they were trying to compete with the bigger players (MSN, Google Chat) more seriously in the business world, and skinning isn't really something businesses care much about.

Businesses often care a lot about it, they just call it “branding” (and it can be a big deal, even for internal tools); obviously, you need to show different examples to them than typical consumers.

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