“But when skeuomorphs get in the way of how we actually use something or build something, they demonstrate a lack of imagination or even cowardice on the part of the designer.…Yes, it’s far easier to get understanding or buy in quickly (from investors, in-laws and users) when you take the shortcut of making your digital thing look and work just like the trusted and proven non-digital thing. But over and over again, we see that the winner doesn’t look at all like the old thing. eBay doesn’t look like Sotheby’s. Amazon doesn’t look like a bookstore. The funding for AirBnB doesn’t look like what it took to get Marriott off the ground” – Seth Godin
Above, Seth Godin nicely articulates my feelings about the skeumorphic design popularized by Apple’s iOS applications. It’s an admittance that the UI design teams (Apple’s in particular, since they started it) don’t know what to do. That they haven’t actually spent the time to think about how a calendar, address book, et al are different, let along how they can be different when they’re on a such a new, futuristic, imaginative device like pocket-sized touch-screen computer.