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Thank you for making this point. As I read that claim, I simply laughed. Certainly Metro is the most recognizable name for a design motif characterized as "flat," and then as you've pointed out Google's Holo motif is a close second.

iOS is many things, but the forerunner of minimalist or flat design? Hardly.

To an extent, I agree with some replies that say, "Well, nevermind, that wasn't really central to the point being made." Yes, but it would be like me saying Java is at the forefront of first-class functions because Java 8 is doing lambdas and then going on to talk about first-class functions.

"entirely undermined ... nothing short of insane."

No it's not remotely 'insane', it's just mildly ignorant. As for 'entirely undermined', clearly the important takeaway from the article has nothing to do with which platform is at the leading edge.

And if you follow the thesis that "retina" quality displays are what's encouraging flat ui design. it's hard to get away from the fact that Apple has been leading the way on that front.

No, it is insane. Gruber positions himself as a voice of Apple/Design authority and is in a position to do so. For him to make the claims he does and title this article as it is, and then ignore the actual design trends is ridiculous. Another reason why he comes across as more Apple shill than journalist, which is a shame.

You clearly don't know what 'insane' means and I wonder if we even read the same article.

Gruber has been a very vocal critics of Apple's hard on for skeuomorphism for a long time. When he says the "timing of this trend, and the fact that iOS — and the iPhone in particular — is its leading edge, is not coincidental" he is most certainly not talking about the OS itself. This should be obvious because in the very next paragraph he says that "the whole default iOS look" is made up of "phony effects". But I guess if you're just here to get your HN rubber stamp upvotes by calling Gruber a one dimensional Apple shill you might have missed that.

yep he should have used the word dishonest or flat out lying...

Downvoted for the last sentence: Gruber explicitly writes that the "whole default iOS look [...] is optimized for non-retina displays", as in: Apple is doing this all wrong. If anything, his insane statement makes him a shill for third-party Apple developers.

(And I would agree that he overestimates the universal love for Letterpress, but basically all of the blogosphere was fawning over it. How much $$$ has it raked in compared to Carcassonne, which is almost a parody of skeuomorphism?)

A little late with the reply here, but I think that his thesis is bogus. So-called "retina" displays are not the reason for flat / modern UI designs moving away from skeuomorphism. I would argue it's just a new trend that naturally developed both from a wont to get away from the old, and from the relatively new sophistication of on-screen design tools (like CSS3, HTML5, etc).

How many people are using Windows 8 compared to iOS? iOS is a trend leader of design, like it or not.

Way more people eat MacDonalds than at high-end restaurants, but few would argue that MacDonalds is the "leading edge" of cuisine. And if you were to characterize the leading edge as the product with the biggest userbase, Android's is larger than iOS's.

Well, Android has more users than iOS, which would make it analogous to McDonald's. Popularity doesn't automatically mean something is leading edge, but certainly the fact that something is extremely unpopular like Windows 8 makes it unlikely to have much impact.

>the fact that something is extremely unpopular like Windows 8 makes it unlikely to have much impact.

Not necessarily. When Metro came out the design was definitely talked and made an impact. The market unpopularity, after that, doesn't effect the initial impact.

I would argue that McDonald's is certainly on the leading edge of cuisine. Their logistics and quality control (perhaps you would prefer to call it "consistency control") are impressive and their cultural, economical, and dietary influence is enormous (for better or for worse).

So by your logic, Android is the McDonald's.

The logic is that "leading edge" and "popular" are not necessarily related.

But surely the fact that very few use Windows 8 could signify that it is not the leading edge, because it is unpopular.

Sure, it could. It could also be ahead of its time. Do you have an argument as to why Windows 8 and Windows Phone is not leading edge, besides the fact that it isn't very popular?

Because Windows 8 is kind of a hot mess?

If they could jettison all of the holdovers from Windows XP and replace things like the file browser and command console with "Metro Native" apps, it would still be pretty to look at, but painful to live with.

If you want to talk about leading edge, look to webOS which was ahead of its time in significant ways.

In so far as it gives people what they want for cheap and is widely available, sure.