[blunderkid]

I liked iOS' "skeuomorphic" design and despise the flatness that Mr Ive introduced, i think 5 years back. The first iPhone was mind blowing because it seemed to make apps pop out of the screen and invited you to tap on them. Flatness is two steps back and made iOS Androidish, not a great design inspiration.

Also the ridiculous obsession with thinness of macs and iPhones probably at the cost of making them do something useful, if that is Mr Ive's doing, he has clearly outlived his usefulness.

Those iMacs though were pretty. Never used one but Ben is right about them being Ive's best work. Wish him a happy and most well deserved retirement.

[dijit]

I also really loved the skeuomorphic design that came with my iPhone 4s.

Buttons looked like buttons, leather and denim accents made the phone feel like a luxury device even though it was just digital fabrication.

Even the notes application looked like a sketch pad with a special “handwriting” font. I was sad when it went but now I’m in full nostalgia mode.

I wonder why they decided to kill it. There must have been a good reason.

[TheOtherHobbes]

I think it was killed because fashion. A lot of modernist typography and design are flat and minimal, and textures-as-signifiers are considered a wild decorative extravagance.

IMO the glass highlights and reflections everywhere were beautiful.

The flat look is just meh in comparison. It does the job, but discoverability for buttons is poor, and it's just boring.

CPU certainly isn't an excuse today. Nor is "It's dated". IMO flat with gradients looked dated as soon as it appeared.

[zapzupnz]

> Buttons looked like buttons

That's an odd one to focus on. Buttons only ever showed in the navigation bar at the top; one rarely, if ever, saw buttons other than to go back and to edit, and since the newer design, the focus has been on swipe gestures for navigation.

iOS 7 did go too far. I think people forget how much the design has improved since then, though.

> There must have been a good reason

All those designs looked hideous, hokey, and everybody hated them? That was made all too clear when those designs made the leap to OS X Lion.

Even back in the iOS 6 days, I thought iOS was beginning to look old and tired.

I think the extensive use of textures and animations (like Passbook's card shredder when deleting a pass) also limited to what extent iOS could be made to dynamically scale up between iPhone and iPad. I'm fairly certain that iOS 7 is when the foundations for this started, with a cleaner design that could more easily adapt to larger devices and different orientations.

I feel like I'm making it up when I say Autolayout started with the new design, but I'm sure the new design was initially made with Autolayout in mind. It wasn't long after the new design that the first iPhone with a different-sized screen came out. Since developers started adopting Autolayout and the new sizing system (well, newer than springs and struts from before) that iPad software can now easily adjust for four display sizes and adapt to macOS in Catalina.

[raverbashing]

> I wonder why they decided to kill it. There must have been a good reason.

Because it is tacky and it didn't age well

I'd say the initial use of it was maybe in discoverability, but I suppose when smartphones became more popular that lost its main function.

I think it gets distracting sometimes and it is needlessly design heavy (think how much images you need to do that).

[zapzupnz]

You got distracted by the Rose Tinted Glasses Brigade, but I think you're absolutely right.

On top of that, I think there were other design considerations — how to make iOS' scale up to iPad more easily (remember when Siri was in a little box in the middle of the screen?) to the point where iPad apps can now be adapted with a checkbox to run on macOS. I think the groundwork started in iOS 7.

[acqq]

My parents still handle easier the UI where they see the "buttons" for the navigation. They are just confused when some of the text is clickable and some is not.

For those who don't know them, the "buttons" like "Cancel" "Next" here:

https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/293595.image1.jpg

Young users don't have such problems, but original iOS was easy to use for the older generations too. Steve Jobs cared about the easy discoverability. That is something that started as early as with Apple Lisa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-atKrg0T4 also recently on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20247545

It was a big step back for my parents when iOS removed the buttons present in the older design and replaced them with the plain text.

[raverbashing]

I'm not sure how that looks like in a modern iOS version

I'd say this is a good example of (light) skeumorphism (which is mostly good and non-intrusive), I was mostly talking about stuff like the notes app https://www.dummies.com/consumer-electronics/tablets/ipad/ho...

[acqq]

> I'm not sure how that looks like in a modern iOS version

https://www.authsmtp.com/images/setup/iOS11-smtp-server-setu...

They never know that they are supposed to click on these to proceed. With the button look it was obvious to them.

[amelius]

> I wonder why they decided to kill it. There must have been a good reason.

Because anyone can copy it. Skeuomorphic is basically a copy in itself, of real-life objects, so there is no design-patent possible.