Apple’s Jony Ive said to be bringing flat design to iOS 7

I hope Apple doesn't pursue the flat UI route a la Microsoft, not only is it not to my taste, but the use of subtle lighting effects have legitimate uses as cues to the user that an element is a button and can be pressed for example. Clearly this is not skeuomorphism as it's not a frivolous accessory but an aid for the user to understand the UI. This is not new either, buttons have been beveled since Mac OS 8 and Windows 3.0!

Essentially I think Apple will ditch the revolting skeuomorphism e.g. leather skinned apps, and continue to use subtle lighting effects and gradients to augment their UIs, and if they are truly planning a radical departure you can bet that it will be something rather original and not simply following Microsoft's lead. That is not Apple's DNA.

--after Apple declared it to be in style.

No, that's not what you meant, but it rings so true in the tech buzzosphere.

In other words, debates about "flat UI" vs "skeumorphism" (which is a false dichotomy imho, but I digress) should not be based upon things like "this era of instant gratification", it should be based upon how well the design serves the purpose of all design: effective and enjoyable use by humans.

The reason skeumorphism exists as an idea is not because it is used to draw the eye to something, it's to create affordances to the user by leveraging their past experiences. This can range anywhere from "this sticks out on the page and can be pushed" to "this reminds me of my real desk calendar."

Insofar as the Flat UI concept neglects to create these natural affordances it fails. The only argument one can make that draws upon the current status quo to defend it is if the world has moved on so fast that natural affordances created by depth and shadow can now be made just as effectively to most people by drawing a colored square instead. I'm skeptical that this is true, since three dimensional vision is pretty core to the human experience and human biology.

I think what we'll see from Apple will not be an abandonment of skeumorphism in general but instead (in typical Ives fashion) a distilling of it down to its core. Expect depth and shadow, but with a laser-like focus towards using it to create affordances instead of add unnecessary flare. Expect its use to be toned down both in prevalence and also in degree. The cliched example of the leather nav bar has never served any real purpose wrt affordances, so I don't think Apple will be clinging too tightly to it.

Metal or drop shadow or physical looking sliders imply solidity and weight. That was a desired thing in the era when we were getting used to screen interfaces. But metal implies that it doesn't move fast. You can't replace an interface with a new modal one that quickly or it looks unreal and weird, like you are flinging metal cabinetry around !

Keep in mind that your visual cortex responds more to difference in colours and spatial frequencies more so than it does to flat expanses of colour. Things like drop shadows and borders add much-needed high-frequency acutance [1] at the edges of shapes, which helps with object recognition.

You see this all the time in the real world - take a look at the logo on these cans [2] and note the white border surrounded by the black border. Going from the base colour like this, all the way to white and then back to black effectively saturates the spatial frequencies at the edge of the shape and forces it to stand out from the background - I'm holding one of these cans in my hand right now and boy oh boy does that logo ever pop.

You see the similar techniques around all the time - look at the text labels on Google Maps, or the black borders around video subtitles. Similarly, see the gradient and drop shadows on the icons on an iPhone home screen - those are there to make them visually recognisable as objects, as opposed to rounded rectangles.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acutance

[2] http://i.imgur.com/WWRDsiE.jpg

Edit: further demonstrations of your visual cortex responding to differentials:

TEMPORAL: http://imgur.com/iqMFv5z.gif

If you stare at the center cross long enough, your retina fatigues and the pink dots start to disappear. Likewise, the rotating absence of a dot is replaced by green.

SPATIAL: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/HermannGr...

The sharp spatial frequencies (unlike anything you would find in nature), aligned at right angles to one another interfere with one another so strongly that you start to see dots at the grid intersections (some may find this stronger than others, I sometimes get this effect from the Windows 8 homescreen, for chrissakes).

Not Metro or Modern, the desktop.

Window titlebars have lost the peekaboo effect and use a solid color instead. The min/max/close buttons do a simple color change with a quick fade confined to their own little rectangle, instead of glowing around the edges. It's a subtle but pleasant improvement.

I don't like the Start screen, but not because of its flatness. It's the tiny text that doesn't obey my screen DPI setting and the gratuitous animation that really bothers my eyes. But that's OK, I use Start8 which brings back a non-animated start menu with the correct font size.

Welp, we're boned.

My personal hope is that they push it a bit flatter than that to something like what Google did in their new iOS Maps app. We'll see.

I guess it's possible that at some point the major interface methods will be standardized to such a degree that future changes will be aesthetic, to avoid putting off people, if nothing else. For instance, there was considerable resistance to MS changing the functional interface of Office not too long ago. But even mature consumer interfaces such as windowing systems continue to introduce additional functionality, although I guess some might characterize those changes as mere window dressing (heh), as well.

Some computer interfaces do head towards what some conceive to be the true answer, with a slow stream of incremental improvements, e.g. the Unix shell. But that's a professional interface subject to other kinds of pressures than consumer technology.

IANAD.

(I've certainly seen apps change behavior simply by being recompiled by a newer SDK, so there must be something in the binary loader that sets a bunch of compability flags or something)

Going purely by the strength of their design team, I'd expect iOS 7 to be closer to Android-flat rather than Metro-flat.

What goes around comes around.

That being said, there's no real reason why Apple has to use textures anywhere. Dieter Rams designed physical products which by their nature must have some texture or another. Having texture is purely optional in a digital product.