>They completely butchered the contrast and initial readability to appease the 'flat' trend style. The personality died.

This line like most of the others in the article is hyperbole and subjective opinion presented as a statement of objective fact.

My own subjective opinion is that skeuomorphism is a lot of unnecessary elements that exist for the sake of design and the designer. Extra borders, boxes, gradients, and contrasting menu bars and buttons are unnecessary noise and useless distraction for interacting with content. I don't want to see a different colored fixed menu as I scroll that is always reminding it is it there. Flat design gets out of the way between reader and content.