Two annoying trends
Today I am going to rant a bit about two trends that simply make no sense to me.
The first is “skeuromorphism.” It’s the new fashion word-du-jour, what with Apple and Microsoft demonising it as if it were some sort of evil plague. As is, Wiki defines skeuromorph as “a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues from structures that were necessary in the original.” That includes, of course, many elements of graphical user interfaces. The desktop metaphor, after all, has been at the very core of every graphical user interface for the past 30 years.
But now that very quality, to make objects on a computer screen look just like the real thing, has come under heavy attack. And that even includes the three dimensional nature of the real world. Apple, especially, but also Microsoft, now want everything to be flat. As flat as possible. Anti-skeuromorphism forces argue that the public has now been exposed to computers long enough to no longer need the analogy to real, physical things. And so, in the eyes of many, the latest versions of many operating environments, and Apple’s iOS, look dreadfully flat and barren indeed.
In Apple’s case, one could well argue that a bit of a backlash against skeuromorphic excess was probably a good thing. Apple, long the champion of good design, had begun slipping with some truly kitschy stuff, like the “leather-bound” address book, the Ikea-style wooden bookshelf and other affronts that likely would have had a healthy Steve Jobs froth at the mouth. So a bit of streamlining things was in order, but when I look at the sad, sparse, flat expanse and eensy-tiny lettering that now mars the iOS and many of its apps, the sad icons that look like they just want to vanish from view, and the rest of the bleakness that now adorns iPhones and iPads, I wish Jonathan Ive and colleagues would have stuck with hardware.
You could argue, of course, that after decades of visual improvements and fine-tuning, the anti-skeuromorphism crusade simply rings in the advent of fashion in electronic interfaces. Just like fashion goes into extremes just to then denounce the trend and swing into the other extreme (neatly obsoleting billions of dollars worth of product in the process), perhaps we’ll now have to put up with anemic, flat computer and tablet screens until the trend reverses and everything becomes three dimensional and lively again.
Okay, the second trend is that to thin and slender hardware design at all cost. The just announced new Apple iPad Air is hailed as a wondrous achievement because it’s thinner yet and weighs even less. It’s a veritable Barbie of a tablet. And since this is Apple, and Apple decreed some years ago that computing devices need to be rectangular and very flat, we now have hyper-slim smartphones, hyper-thin tablets, and even hyper-thin iMacs, which in the latters’ case makes absolutely no sense since they sit on a desk in front of you. And we also have hyper-thin HDTVs. Size is okay as we now have smartphones with screen sizes approaching 6 inches and flat screen TVs approaching 90 inches. But it all must be very flat and thin.
Why?
I mean, making that technology so very flat simply makes it more difficult to design and manufacture, and since hardware happens to be a physical thing it often loses utility if it’s pressed into too flat of a design (the new iPad Air’s battery is down to 32.9 WHr, vs. the iPad 4’s 43 WHr). The dreadful sound of flat-screen TVs is a prime example, and the so-so battery life of many super-slim smartphones another. More and more the trend to supreme thinness seems more a narcissistic quest to prove that one’s technology is so advanced that mere physicality no longer matters. Sort of like a supermodel starving herself into a skeletal, gaunt appearance just to be lauded for her discipline and elegance.
It makes no sense. I mean, the latest Crossover probably weighs almost 5,000 pounds, a house weighs an awful lot, and American people weigh more all the time, too. So why is ultimate thinness in an electronic device such a virtue?
And it especially makes no sense for rugged devices where the very physicality of the design provides the structure and toughness to make it last on the job. And where a degree of volume means it’ll run cooler and provide space for expansion and versatility. Yet, even rugged device are getting thinner all the time. They have to, or the public, even customers in enterprise and industrial markets, will stay away.
So there, two silly trends. And trends they are, as you can’t keep making physical stuff thinner beyond a certain point. Once that point is reached, the quest is over, and the pendulum will reverse or go elsewhere. It’s quite possible that the next Steve Jobs will some day present the latest super-gadget, and it will be egg-shaped. It’s possible.
Be that as it may, I just hope that technology will stay as free from fashion dictates as possible. Because once it takes fashion to sell gear, that means innovation is over.