Although he gets most of the blame for it, skeuomorphism wasn’t really Scott Forstall’s fault. He was just following the orders of his boss and mentor, Steve Jobs. The man who gave the world the first skeumorphic consumer operating system, the Macintosh, loved computer interfaces with gaudy textures that made them look more like real-world things.
In fact, if it were not for Steve Jobs’s love of skeuomorphism, Apple’s design language might have been a lot flatter a lot earlier. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1999, the company was moving away from skeuomorphic design… but Jobs bought it back, with the famous brushed metal texture in the Quicktime app.
Over at Business Insider, Nicholas Carlson talks about how Steve Jobs was inspired by the brushed metal texture on a high-end Breitling watch for the Quicktime interface.
Here’s how the meeting between Steve Jobs and the Quicktime designers went down:
Jobs was very adamant that Quicktime “look like a real stereo,” says our source.
The team kept coming up with designs. Jobs hated them all.
“No, no, no, you just don’t get it!”
Then, one day, Jobs came into a meeting with the design team with a piece of paper in his hand. It was a ripped-out page from a magazine. It was an ad for a Breitling watch, which had a brushed bevel finish that Jobs really liked.
He put the ad on the table.
“Here,” he said, “Just make it look like that.”
When Apple introduced the brushed metal look to Apple, they warned developers from using it too indiscriminately. Of course, over time, Apple ignored its own warning, and Apple’s skeuomorphic design phase was back on in earnest. Thank god for Jony Ive, huh?
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
21 responses to “How Steve Jobs brought skeuomorphism back to Apple in 1999”
BAH! I totally disagree with your GAUDY comment. Though I like some of the “NEW” look I also think it’s swung to far to the “CRAYOLA” look. Everything is like a 3rd grade text book, well if they still have books.
Skeuomorphism is helpful when you first introduce a totally new function or app so that people, if I might use a simplistic example, can use their knowledge of real world telephones to operate the app version thereof. Apple’s deployment of skeuomorphism probably prevented a lot of confusion and tech support calls so I wouldn’t snobbishly condemn it. Of course this is not to say that like anything else it can’t be overdone or used beyond its useful life.
And really, how many people get their panties bunched up over brushed metal vs. matte grey? Are there people out there whose computer purchasing decision is impacted by this? Regular people don’t really notice or care.
Was skeuomorphism really THAT bad at the time? Yeah, when I look at it now it looks dated, but the tone of this article reeks of someone who wore stone-washed jeans, then talks about how terrible they were like 2 days after they go out of style.
The worst I saw in this regard (whoever actually did this work, forgive me) was the Game Center, a relatively recent development, ala the texture and color of a gaming surface like a pool table.
OMG.. Game Center graphics harken back to 1940’s designs… sad.
Yeah, I wasn’t crazy about that. Psychological, it made me think of Windows 98 games, for whatever reason.
Uh…. John? Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, not 1999.
And the brushed metal look being referred to didn’t come out until QuickTime 4, which was released in 1999. Do some research before calling people out.
;-) I wasn’t calling him out… I was merely pointing out that the sentence he wrote has a flaw that makes people mix up the facts.
If he changes the sentence to ‘When Steve came back to Apple, the company was moving away from skeuomorphic design in 1999 (etc)’ there is no ambiguity. Not a big deal in my book…
“Uh…. John?” <–That's called calling someone out.
That's not correct and you didn't read the article. It doesn't say that Steve came back to Apple in 1999; it says he told them to use the brushed metal look for the new QuickTime (4) software that was released in 1999. The headline doesn't even say what you think it does. Again, check your facts before calling people out.
Flat, gaudy, and harder to use. Why eliminate cues from the interface? Is Jonny Ive hung up on Wind Tunnel tests? MORE cues mean easier interaction, especially for those with age, eyesight or other disabilities.
Oh, and “hidden buttons” are obscene and contrary to 40 years of human interface design.
Yes Skeuomorphism was so “bad” that it only made the iPhone (and iOS by extension) THE most popular phone almost overnight.
If anything it made possible for a whole new category of consumers (mainly elderly folks) not to feel intimidated by the new multi-touch technology.
Sometimes I wish they hand’t make the transition to a more flatten design so aggressively.
As critical as Brownlee is of skeuomorphic design, I’d like to hear what he thinks of all Jony Ive’s skeuomorphic Apple Watch designs — if I wanted to look at an analog clock face, I’d buy a wind-up. Apparently, Jony doesn’t feel the same.
Digital watch or not, I prefer an analog dial, whether real or simulated, because it’s easier to tell the time at a glance. Actually more important than telling the time is getting a quick estimate of how far away the top of the hour is. Or noon, or closing time, etc. A graphical representation is just better for that type of information. I don’t claim that’s true for everyone, but that’s the way my brain is wired.
Maybe you didn’t hear. There will be many many watch faces to choose from. If you don’t want the analog look don’t use it.
Wow! Steve was right again!
Forstall “jumped the shark” when he demonstrated the paper shredder in Passbook. That took skeuomorphism beyond ridiculous, and the stupid smirk on his face suggests that he knew it…
I completely disagree with all this rage against skeuomorphism. It was a design style dominant during some time and now got out of fashion. Just this. From an objective point of view, skeuomorphism can produce UI as good as the plain-style which is now the rule. It depends on how and for what it is used. And you can see really bad designs is both ways —just remember Calendar and Game Center under ML and Notes and Contacts under Mavericks. So, Scott Forstall is not ‘guilty’, he was doing UIs accordingly a given style which was once the winner. I believe one can even find more flaws in Ive’s UIs than in Scott’s ones, although Ive has a number of brilliant products in his favor.
I miss this iTunes look so much D:
“When Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1999, the company was moving away from skeuomorphic design”
John Brownlee, did you even use a Mac in the late 90s? Apple has been moving forward in skeuomorphism since the left System 7.6 and moved to Mac OS 8. Beveled buttons and 3D raised windows were just the beginning of what to come. And guess what? That was BEFORE Steve came back to Apple.
Not sure how you get that they were moving away from it. Pre-OS 8 was the ONLY time Apple lacked dimension in their UI. Skeuomorphism is trying to recreate a real-world feel on a screen and that’s exactly what OS 8.x did.
Unfortunately Ives made the pendulum to swing too far in the opposite direction …. and reversed Apple’s long-time philosophy of “function trumps form.” Many long-time Apple fans … including me … hate the new light pastel, low contrast colors, and the thin fonts on light background that’s difficult to read without staring.