We’re not fans of the virtual leather, felt, wood and glass design in some of Apple’s software. It’s like a sleazy game room in your cool uncle’s garage. Who is making these eye-screwing decisions? Apparently, it was all Steve Jobs.
Skeumorphism — the design technique of making a virtual thing look like a real thing in order to help familiarise you with it — has grown from a mole to a tumour across both Mac OS X and iOS. While Apple’s Scott Forstall is considered the main culprit these days, FastCo’s Austin Carr spoke with former Apple designers who say otherwise:
But before Forstall, it was Steve Jobs who encouraged the skeuomorphic approach, some say. “iCal’s leather-stitching was literally based on a texture in his Gulfstream jet,” says the former senior UI designer. “There was lots of internal email among UI designers at Apple saying this was just embarrassing, just terrible.”
Pushing for a change in design trajectory based on the luxury stitching in your gaudy private jet seems so antithetically Apple and yet so quintessentially Steve Jobs. Let’s hope Tim Cook flies commercial. [FastCompany]