A eulogy for Apple’s Skeuomorphism

I was sitting in the passenger seat of a sedan the other day, when I noticed the cup-holder under the AC vent. The first time I saw it, it obviously looked like I was supposed to press it for something to happen but I wasn’t prepared for the little delight it held in store for me - the sheer joy of watching the cup holder unfold in front of me as it silently and smoothly slid out, as if to humbly and gracefully offer its assistance to me, was enough for me to keep playing with it for the next fifteen minutes.

(Image credit: www.autojunction.in)

The only other time I’d felt a little tickle of excitement like that in recent times was when I tried deleting a photo from my iPhone. It was running iOS 6 at the time. The animation, of the photo getting pulled into the little trash can that opened its lid, might be tacky or overkill to some, but to me, it was delightfully appropriate and ingenious (Apple probably thought so too because they patented it).

The point here is not just the delight one feels. The point is that it was delightfully appropriate. This is what Apple had achieved through their skeuomorphic interface. There has always been a fundamental difference between the way iOS and its arch rival, Android, have done things. We all know it and we’ve all felt it. While Steve Jobs denounced Android because he deemed it to be a stolen product, it makes sense that Android would enrage him in general because of how philosophically different the two systems are.

Feature-rich vs Consistent

I’ve been an Android user since Froyo and I’ve had an iMac at home for an equally long time. Earlier this year, I switched to the iPhone. So, I’ve felt this difference for several years now. Android is an experiment - it is a continuous exploration masquerading as a consumer product. One look at the evolution that Android went through after it was first available to paying customers makes one realise it has always been one big beta test.

Of course, being a perpetual experiment, Android can afford to be open source. It makes Android unbelievably feature-rich, flexible, extensible and like most other things Google does, it gives Android the ability to go beyond the bounds of a single company and grow on its own as a separate being. For an amorphous ecosystem of devices such as this, the Holo interface serves perfectly - defining only the bare necessities, abstaining from creating any sort of character and trying its best to blend away from the user’s attention so that anything and everything could look as if it belonged there.

This goes against everything that Apple stands for. Apple is a company that excels at producing consumer products. It includes very less features in its releases, and most features that do get added, are years behind their time. However, everything that it rolls out promises to be market-ready, complete and is sure to add value to the experience in an intrinsically important manner (huh? Maps? What Maps? :) ). It spends a lot of money, time and effort for being this way and staunchly, proudly and bravely believes in it. Its devices were meant for consumers because they had the one precious quality which set it apart from its peers - Meaningful Consistency. Consistency, in the way it behaved across various functions, and between how something looked and how it responded. It might take you a while to ‘get to know’ Apple’s devices but once you did, you couldn’t go back to anything else. Sure, while some interactions were blissfully intuitive, some others were difficult to grasp but they were all always consistent. Apple believed in catering to only one scenario per function, but it catered to that scenario in the manner such that the solution sat perfectly and meaningfully in the bigger picture of a consistent cross-device experience, maintaining a definite character.

This is where skeuomorphism becomes important. Real, physical machines do not have to try hard to exemplify the consistency because they’re already bound by the rules of physics of the real world. However, virtual systems like an OS need to work towards implying that consistency because there are practically no rules in that world. Once that consistency is constructed, a user can ‘get to know’ the ‘machine’. To get to know a machine built in the virtual world, especially one built for laymen, one needs a cohesive visual system of affordance that is unshakeable. The shadows, the gloss, the gradients and the textures all served a purpose apart from being ornamental - they told us what to do without making us feel like fools or forcing us to guess. Because the interface was skeuomorphic, it harked back to concepts we were already used to and familiar with in the real world, thus making interactions predictable and creating the impression of a meaningful cohesive system. It even made the device feel royal, expensive - as if someone had spent years and years perfecting every single detail just so the user could take pleasure in using it, like a Rolls Royce. This is how they created the delightfully appropriate experience - make an affordance crystal clear (press on the cup holder) and then put just a little something extra in the way it obeys the command (the cup holder unfolds and slides out).

And then came iOS 7. I am not going to crib about the bright colours because I have no right to challenge subjective choices the designer makes for his products. I also don’t want to claim that skeuomorphism is the only way to achieve the delightfully appropriate behaviour. What I do challenge is the complete and thorough annihilation of the beautiful and powerful consistency, and the cold-blooded murder of a painstakingly evolved character. What we’ve received in its stead is a hastily constructed system of visuals and transitions that come together as gracefully as a car put together in a scrap yard. Even within the inbuilt applications, the experience varies with schizophrenic frequency (oh the wireframe calendar next to the textured reminders and notes; and if someone has figured out what logic is used for deciding the colour of the font in the various inbuilt apps, I’m all ears. If you’re guessing that they correspond to the colour of their app icon, you’re wrong).

There is no underlying philosophy or an overarching thought process that makes the interface predictable or consistent. if there is no way for one to predict, there is no scope for one to be delighted by surprises. Without consistency, nothing is appropriate and the experience becomes a mine-field of interactions where everything is a rude surprise.

The skeuomorphism had a purpose, a function. The new minimalist, colourful overhaul seems to have killed the skeuomorphic design but it didn’t replace the functionality of it. Consequently, it makes for an experience that is random and fragmented - a term that had been notoriously used only for Android. No wonder that now, the iOS is getting compared to Android.

Try deleting a photo from your new iOS 7. As you watch the photo fade away into the oblivion (not scale down, mind you, it fades out of focus and away), feel your respect fizzle out with it.