I don’t take today’s news (and update of podcasts.app) to mean iOS is going to start looking like Metro. Things will still be gorgeous, they’ll just be simple gradients instead of mimicking real world textures. Just between iOS 5 and 6 we can see this trent in UINav and Tool bars loosing their gloss for smooth gradients. We also saw OS X go from heavily textured brushed metal to a smooth low-contrast gradient. But to extrapolate that we’re headed towards just solid colors is ridiculous. 8 bit designs don’t look good. That’s why we stopped using them. Metro looks refreshing, sure, but that doesn’t imply nice. It looks nicer than Android (which is also very flat) because Segoe is a nice font and roboto is a collection of stolen sans serifs.

The reason we hate certain skeuomorphic designs varies by each one. Address book doesn’t need to be symmetrical. Notes doesn’t need to flap. iCal doesn’t need torn pages or to be month by month (please someone make a rolling 5 week calendar). Find my Friends actually has a very usable interface, it’s just the awful puke yellow color of the leather that’s a turn off.

I would like for iOS 7 to gain the chrome look of iOS Maps.