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Can’t agree more iOS 7 design goal was to get rid of skeuomorphism.

This goal was so overachieved than young readers probably will have to google the term.

And now computer UIs are ugly as sin and impossible to find the interactive elements. Meanwhile in the physical world skeuomorphism is huge with Chinese factories pumping out all manner of products that just barely match the appearance of real objects made of quality materials, woods, and fabrics, when viewed in a store or just a photo in an online store.

It had to die for more practical reasons - a pixel perfect interface is impossible to maintain with difference screen sizes. At the time there was only the 3.5 inch iPhone and the iPad.

Apple knew that various size iPhones were in the pipe.

Except it didn't have to be pixel perfect. Mac OS X was skeuomorphic and beautiful, yet it worked on various size displays, you could even resize a window, in real time, imagine that!

If you're going strictly based on going from skeuomorphic to flat, everyone is talking about the less intuitive and obvious UX design, not the aesthetic design of the UI.

In other words, the function, not the form.