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Let me offer a rephrasing: your claim that the original iPhone's skeuomorphic design was "to make the phone look small" and that the later, flatter UI design wa

Let me offer a rephrasing: your claim that the original iPhone's skeuomorphic design was "to make the phone look small" and that the later, flatter UI design was "to make the same device look bigger" requires more of an explanation than your implicit "this is clearly obvious to even the most casual of observers." I don't recall anyone at Apple ever explaining that their original UI choices were about "making the phone look small," nor have I ever learned in UI design -- which I have studied -- that smallness is some inherent property of skeuomorphism. So maybe you could enlighten us without being, you know, a jerk about it.

astrange 6y ago
I am quoting him directly and I decline to reveal my sources.
- coldtea 6y ago
  Of course you do. LOL. As the grantparent said, noone at Apple ever claimed so. The device was small anyway in actual life (no need to "make it look small"), skeuomorphic vs flat has nothing to do with making a device appear smaller or bigger, iPad and even OS X also used skeuomorphism (so it wasn't a size concern), and Ive never said anything to that effect. The whole idea doesn't even make sense. As for what Ive actually said, citing real-life metaphors and familiarity as the reasons (for the skeuomorphic design): “When we sat down last November (to work on iOS 7), we understood that people had already become comfortable with touching glass, they didn’t need physical buttons, they understood the benefits,” says Ive. “So there was an incredible liberty in not having to reference the physical world so literally. We were trying to create an environment that was less specific. It got design out of the way.” And Scott Forstall said the same: "If you look at the designs we did at Apple, we talked about photo illustrative designs, metaphorical designs. And those were infused into the design sense of Apple by Steve Jobs since the original Mac if not earlier. The original Mac had a desktop and folders that looked very much like the desktop on which that Mac sat. And so we used these design philosophies".

astrange 6y ago

I am quoting him directly and I decline to reveal my sources.

coldtea 6y ago
Of course you do. LOL. As the grantparent said, noone at Apple ever claimed so. The device was small anyway in actual life (no need to "make it look small"), skeuomorphic vs flat has nothing to do with making a device appear smaller or bigger, iPad and even OS X also used skeuomorphism (so it wasn't a size concern), and Ive never said anything to that effect. The whole idea doesn't even make sense. As for what Ive actually said, citing real-life metaphors and familiarity as the reasons (for the skeuomorphic design): “When we sat down last November (to work on iOS 7), we understood that people had already become comfortable with touching glass, they didn’t need physical buttons, they understood the benefits,” says Ive. “So there was an incredible liberty in not having to reference the physical world so literally. We were trying to create an environment that was less specific. It got design out of the way.” And Scott Forstall said the same: "If you look at the designs we did at Apple, we talked about photo illustrative designs, metaphorical designs. And those were infused into the design sense of Apple by Steve Jobs since the original Mac if not earlier. The original Mac had a desktop and folders that looked very much like the desktop on which that Mac sat. And so we used these design philosophies".