Apple and the future of design
I blame the floppy disk. For years, it served as the icon for “save,” clearly illustrating to the user that your data would be written to that flat square thing with the hole in it—a digital representation of hardware, guiding you to your intended goal. Clicking that icon would block the UI with an hourglass cursor, and reward you with the familiar grinding song of a floppy drive.
And then in 1998, Apple introduced the iMac—with no floppy drive. Though some computer makers continued shipping floppy drives for more than a decade, most of the industry quickly followed in Apple’s footsteps, abandoning those square disks. But bizarrely, the icon persisted.
The modern term for using digital graphical representations of real-world, physical items is skeuomorphism, and recently, skeuomorphism’s been taking a lot of heat. Apple’s Calendar app, with its rich leather and beautiful stitching, might be heavy-handed, but it also looks a lot like an old-timey paper desk calendar. And there’s the rub.
There are two reasons to take a physical approach to digital design. The first is obvious: to make things pretty and stylish and to allow the designer to show off their incredible Photoshop skills. It’s this aspect of skeuomorphism that seems to rile some folks up. The second, more altruistic motivation behind the design philosophy is to create something that the user is immediately familiar with. That familiarity is comforting, and can help humanize an otherwise confusing, cold piece of technology—something Apple has always been good at.
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