--- ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Flatland by [Lev Grossman](https://time.com/author/lev-grossman/) Jun 3, 2013 4:00 AM UTC  Illustration by Joe Magee by [Lev Grossman](https://time.com/author/lev-grossman/) Jun 3, 2013 4:00 AM UTC In 1890 an Archaeologist named Henry Colley March published an article in Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society titled “The Meaning of Ornament: Or Its Archaeology and Its Psychology.” In the article, March coined a word, a rather obscure and homely one: skeuomorph. He probably never anticipated that this word would become the focus of an intense 21st century debate in the field of digital-interface design, a debate being played out on the world’s PCs and tablets and phones, right under the noses of billions of people who have no idea what a skeuomorph even is. The term skeuomorph (pronounced skyoo-uh-morf) refers to an element in an object’s design that’s no longer functionally necessary but has been retained anyway for ornamental purposes. March uses the example of leather thongs. In the ancient world, thongs were used to hold together tools like stone axes; they were eventually rendered obsolete, but long after that you’d still see objects with twisted-leather-thong patterns etched into them just for show. The thong pattern was a skeuomorph: people expected thongs, so they got thongs, or at least thong patterns, even when they didn’t really need them anymore. We don’t see leather thongs that often anymore, even in the form of skeuomorphs, but skeuomorphism itself is as current as ever, particularly in the realm of software design. Digital objects aren’t bound by the same constraints as real-world objects–that is, broadly speaking, the whole point of digital objects–but they’re often made to look like real-world objects anyway. The trash can in Apple’s OS X doesn’t have to look like a real-life trash can–it could look like anything at all–but it does, because that way we instantly know what it’s for. Likewise, there’s no practical reason the books app on an iPhone has to look like an actual bookshelf complete with fake wood grain, but it does, because it’s familiar. Once you start looking for skeuomorphs, you find them everywhere. But there’s a powerful antiskeuomorphism sentiment in the design world. The blogosphere is rife with screeds against it. The influential Apple commentary blog Daring Fireball reports that “what’s going on today is more than just a rejection of over-the-top skeuomorphic textures; it is instead a very strong push in the opposite direction.” Veteran software developer James Higgs put it starkly on the Made by Many blog: skeuomorphic designs are obsolete “because they are lies. They attempt to comfort us (to patronize us) by trying to show how they relate to physical objects in the real world when there is no need.” There’s an entire blog–skeu.it–devoted to the “arbitrary and gratuitous user interface decisions” produced by skeuomorphism. There are a few different problems with the practice of importing designs from the physical world into the digital one. One is that it limits what digital objects can do and be and look like. Why, after all, should the layout of a calculator app have to mimic that of a real-world calculator? Why stick with that tiny display and the limited number of keys and functions? (For an example of a postskeuomorphist calculator app, check out Soulver.) Why should a digital calendar look like a real one, with a rigid layout and a fixed number of days per page? Likewise, skeuomorphic designs create false expectations. A digital book may look like a book, but you can’t feel the pages, or turn two at a time, or fold down the corners, or scribble in the margins. Skeuomorphs are often at odds with the design schemes around them: an address book with a fake-leather theme clashes with an operating system built out of brushed-metal textures. They also tend to be busy and detail-heavy; that’s a particular problem on mobile phones, where displays are small and computing resources are limited. In April, Facebook subtly altered its iconic F logo, taking out the little glossy highlight bar at the bottom, thus turning it from a fake three-dimensional object into an avowedly flat two-dimensional object. That was a blow against skeuomorphism. The revolt will culminate in June at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where the company is expected to unveil iOS7 and OS X 10.9, redesigned versions of its two flagship operating systems. Last October, in a corporate shake-up, Apple handed control of its software design to Jonathan Ive, who had long been chief of the company’s hardware design. Ive is deeply committed to a design philosophy of simplicity that unites form and function and context. Apple is famous for not commenting on its works in progress, but if the rumors on the many fanatical Apple-watching blogs–invariably sourced to anonymous insiders–are anywhere near true, Ive is ruthlessly purging all remaining skeuomorphic elements from Apple’s operating systems, thereby plunging users into a brave and very flat new world. Which is Ironic, because apple is a house built on skeuomorphism. When Steve Jobs shepherded the original Macintosh to market in 1984, he was the first to successfully introduce consumers to the idea of a graphical user interface, or GUI (you say it gooey). Before that, most computers confronted users with a naked command line where they were expected to type out their instructions as raw text. The Macintosh offered a user-friendly alternative: a crude digital rendering of a desktop, with windows and documents and folders and a trash can, all aimed at skeuomorphically mimicking the real physical work environment we’re used to. It was a revolution. The Macintosh GUI did what skeuomorphs do so well: it made an unfamiliar environment feel safe and easy. Ever since, Apple’s software has been littered with skeuomorphs and other details derived from the real world: brushed-steel textures, glossy highlights, candy-colored buttons, three-dimensional shadows and reflections. Legend has it that the skeuomorphic leather-stitching pattern in iCal, the calendar application that comes with OS X, is based on the upholstery in Jobs’ Gulfstream jet. It’s Microsoft, which has historically played catch-up to Apple in design, that has led the charge into the postskeuomorphic future. Last October, Windows 8 launched with a striking and decisively unskeuomorphic look. Based on brightly colored tiles rather than a traditional desktop, it’s highly animated and almost entirely abstract–it’s as if Mondrian designed an operating system. Windows 8 has a compelling integrity: it makes a clean break with reality. Windows 8 has caught a lot of flak from critics who say it lacks the user-friendliness of the traditional skeuomorphic desktop. And that’s true: its cleanness and crispness come at the expense of familiar signposts and little visual cues, like shadows and highlights, that tell users in subtle ways where they’re supposed to look and what they’re supposed to do. It’s possible for software to be too flat. Skeuomorphism isn’t inherently bad when used responsibly. There’s nothing wrong with being user-friendly. But now Apple, for a wonder, is chasing Microsoft. It remains to be seen how far iOS7 and OS X 10.9 will go in dispensing with skeuomorphism, but it’s clearly time for a change. Over the past decade Apple’s hardware under Ive and its software have diverged, the hardware becoming sleeker and simpler and more abstract, the software still clinging to realistic forms and details. With Ive running the whole show, hardware and software are likely to converge again–the software will stop mirroring reality and start simply being itself. In the past Ive has said of his approach to design, “You cannot disconnect the form from the material–the material informs the form.” The material of software is, ultimately, pixels and electrons. Going forward, we can expect its form to reflect that. 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