Skeuomorphism – I want MORE, not less!

Since first using a Mac in 1989 I have always enjoyed personalizing my Mac AND having the life-like features, classy icons and so much more that made using the Mac fun, enjoyable, aesthetic and easy-- intuitive!

So when I hear all this talk about removing the leather on Calendar and Notes, flattening the 3D icons and removing the personality of the OS - I cringe…

Don't people realize that the interface is what enables fast, easy computing? And let's face it, not many of us are doing factorial calculations or heavy statistics on our Macs, iPads, iPods, iPhones, PC's or tablets… (a bit!)-- -- rather we are primarily creating photo albums, recording our voices, sending eMails, watching the Soyuz launch, checking out "les années folles" 1920's dance this weekend, facetiming, facebooking, booking tickets for shows, banking, buying stocks, SKYPEing, timing, browsing the www, watching movies, keeping a diary, a calendar, writing visit reports… and on and on…

Isn't it fun to do this in a max-skeuomorphistic way? For me it is! (We've got all these super-fast, super-powerful computers so let's take advantage of this!)

But if some people want boring B&W flat icons (by the way, thank you TotalFinder for colored sidebars in Mountain Lion and tabbed Finder windows, too!)--- at least give us the choice. In System preferences for Mac OS X 10.9 (and maybe in iOS7 too somehow) --- let US CHOOSE if we want superskeuomorphism, or just for some apps or none whatsoever. That really should not be so difficult! Worried about Hard Drive Space--- hey, my SE has a 40 mb drive-- MEGAbit not GB and today 40 gb is so small that only iPads or iPhones have less. (iPad 3 with 64 gb and my next iPad will have the option to go to 256 gb I hope!)

I'd love to get feedback here and also to know where I might post these ideas if perhaps this section is not the best. Then again I argue: If you turn on your Mac or PC or iPad and the first thing you see makes you say "Yuck, boring, dull…" -- you are not prone to have a great computing experience! So this may just be the ideal place to post this to get some feedback to see if I'm the only one who feels this way. Sure, I'll be eMailing APPLE, too.

Wednesday 29 May 2013