Beyond Flat

I dislike Flat design because it removes visual affordances that help novice users navigate a new interface. I loathe Google Maps on iOS because it is unclear to me that certain icons act as both buttons and draggable inputs. I've been casually using the app since its release, and I continue to be frustrated by it today.

While the original iOS design provided visual embellishments that served two purposes. First, textures provide familiar context giving new users a sense of immediate understanding. Second, basic features were obvious to intuit. It was clear what was a button and what was interface chrome. The same cannot be said with iOS7. Yes, it's easy to learn that colorized text is a button. But, it must be learned, and is easy to miss when quickly scanning the interface.

For these reasons I believe the parent's points are valid. I do not however want to abandon flat design, but personally hope that we find a balance between styles rather than adhere to flat design orthodoxy.

I know the only time I've ever seen one is on the commercials on TV.

Internet blog posts, specially the kinds written by people in tech that gets shared around on HN tend to have opinionated, often inflexible view on things - as if their understanding and by extension the reality is immutable. This is not entirely bad because it does spur on good discussion. Just don't take everything you read to be encyclopaedic facts and don't be surprised with 'absurdities' of these sort.

And I do agree with you abt WP OS. It has a fine design language, is very pleasant to use and was ahead of its time in embracing flat design accentuated with tasteful transition effects. I can see some iconography and other stuff on iOS 7 screen-grabs that appear to have been inspired by WP8.

A long time iOS user, I recently got lured in by WP8's smooth, no frills stylings and Nokia Lumia's edible designs. WP8 started late, yes. But it's in no way asleep or doomed. Happy so far with it.

In contrast, most apps after they are auto-closed by the system, lose their history. One could argue that Facebook is maybe "more correct" here, but for the most part, "back within this current session" is what I want, which leads into the next point.

If I tap a URL within some app that opens up the Android web browser, and I then hit the back button, I am brought back to my app. So I sort of expect this behavior, but again, different apps act very differently here. This is where Facebook's usage is really strange, I tap on a FB notification, go into the FB app, hit back, and rather than be brought back to whatever I was doing before, I am navigated to some conversation I last had a week ago. (I obviously don't use the FB app that often!)

There are plenty of other examples of inconsistent back button usage even throughout core OS experiences. What back is going to do when I am in the Text Messaging app is solely dependent upon how I entered the app.

(And then there is the entire thing about browser sessions from clicked on URLs within apps being entirely different than browser sessions from when I manually open the browser)

Sure, WP7 was the first major phone operating system to go flat. However, that doesn't have anything to do with the fact that a major design difference between iOS and Android in the last year or two has been that Android is 'flat' and iOS is not.