Regarding the iPhone's role in all this: in the early 2000s, Apple's OS X HIG used to make the distinction somewhat clear when to use the "more" skeumorphic/realist brushed metal style and when to stick to the core Aqua interface with its realist textures, yet abstract meaning. The developer was supposed to ask herself/himself the question that this post is invoking as well: is this specific interaction more easily understood if it maps to a physical object? They used QuickTime as an example, since it related to a real world object: a VHS deck/DVD player.
Then Apple started breaking with its own HIG. The Finder was the prime example, once it adopted brushed metal.
The main shift, however, came not with the iPhone but two years earlier: Dashboard widgets were encouraged to have extreme visual richness, independent of whether there was a real world equivalent or not. Take the Weather widget, for instance. Previous to the slight adjustments in iOS6, the Weather app spoke the exact same visual language as the 2005 widget. You even got the grey linen when you flipped widgets to get to their settings.
Of course, iOS devices were the factor with enough impact to proliferate this style into so many designers' visual language, but this distinction in the timeline slightly takes apart the nice logic behind Apple's decision to push this type of design. Mobile devices had less to do with it than Apple's desire to create a wow factor in their UI. The touch target argument doesn't apply to widgets, neither does the "device becomes the software" point, and of course Apple was completely fine with having 100% inconsistent, heavily colored, heavily textured interfaces be on screen side-by-side, since that was the whole point of putting these widgets together on a Dashboard: they all came and went at once.
Now, I am actually not saying this to criticize the style. In my opinion, it showed guts, curiosity, and showmanship. And it worked.
Nor do I want to attack the article - lots of great points in there. However, I thought it would be interesting to underline the typical Apple manner in which this stuff came to be.
(Of course, if anyone really wanted to stick to their guns, they could point out that Cupertino was already working on the iPhone at the time Dashboard came around. Maybe they were just giving the style a test run with full knowledge of its role in their future. The timelines only overlap sparsely from all we can tell, but it's possible. Still. That doesn't invalidate the wow-focus its implementation in Dashboard implies.)
Then Apple started breaking with its own HIG. The Finder was the prime example, once it adopted brushed metal.
The main shift, however, came not with the iPhone but two years earlier: Dashboard widgets were encouraged to have extreme visual richness, independent of whether there was a real world equivalent or not. Take the Weather widget, for instance. Previous to the slight adjustments in iOS6, the Weather app spoke the exact same visual language as the 2005 widget. You even got the grey linen when you flipped widgets to get to their settings.
Of course, iOS devices were the factor with enough impact to proliferate this style into so many designers' visual language, but this distinction in the timeline slightly takes apart the nice logic behind Apple's decision to push this type of design. Mobile devices had less to do with it than Apple's desire to create a wow factor in their UI. The touch target argument doesn't apply to widgets, neither does the "device becomes the software" point, and of course Apple was completely fine with having 100% inconsistent, heavily colored, heavily textured interfaces be on screen side-by-side, since that was the whole point of putting these widgets together on a Dashboard: they all came and went at once.
Now, I am actually not saying this to criticize the style. In my opinion, it showed guts, curiosity, and showmanship. And it worked. Nor do I want to attack the article - lots of great points in there. However, I thought it would be interesting to underline the typical Apple manner in which this stuff came to be.
(Of course, if anyone really wanted to stick to their guns, they could point out that Cupertino was already working on the iPhone at the time Dashboard came around. Maybe they were just giving the style a test run with full knowledge of its role in their future. The timelines only overlap sparsely from all we can tell, but it's possible. Still. That doesn't invalidate the wow-focus its implementation in Dashboard implies.)