Gadgetory

honey this is a demain packing.com and we're wondering do you like skeuomorph or digital authenticity first let's talk about what skeuomorph s-- are it's new buzz word used to describe design elements that have no purpose in their current form but are used to give a familiarity to something from the past skeuomorph design elements are extremely prevalent in apple's software designs in iPhoto for iOS you'll see your photo albums represented as ebooks sitting on shelves with pictures on them you'll see pictures of paintbrushes and pencils to represent editing tools the iBooks and newsstand apps show your books and subscriptions on wooden shells buns have bells and shadows and fake light refraction the dock at the bottom of the home screen has fake icon reflections the game center has textures straight out of a casino on the other hand there's Microsoft with Windows Phone 7 Microsoft has gone in a completely different direction they're taking user interface design into a future without the useless yet familiar skeuomorph the interface actually feels like something from a science fiction movie Square and rectangular tiles are neatly arranged in solid colored pixel forms while floating over a bear area of negative space on the star screen there's nothing to fake here though icons to represent simplified forms of objects from the past like the telephone receiver still we have buttons that aren't pretending to be something else text is text pictures or pictures there aren't any extraneous decorations fake reflections or unnecessary textures here Microsoft's designers seem to be going by the quote from Antoine de Saint Xperia perfection is achieved not when there's nothing left to add but when there's nothing left to take away whereas Apple's designers seem to add all sorts of unnecessary graphics which Clive Thompson of Wired says are hobbling innovation and lashing designers to metaphors of the past let us know what you think in the comments are you a fan of pixels pretending to be they're bound textures and spiral-bound notebooks or to prefer your pixels to be more digitally authentic