Maybe one day iOS will support skins/themes and we can make our own decisions about the interface’s appearance.
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I would be disappointed if iOS or macOS reverted to neumorphism. Everything displayed so far conflicts with readability (by introducing visual noise) and density (by requiring more space around elements.) The perceived z-height creates uncertainty rather than reducing it unless everything in a view is a raised or depressed button, which never happens outside of a calculator app.
Dieter Rams’ work is remarkable, but he would not design a tappable button to look like a graspable knob.
I do appreciate the design experiment though. It’s not a waste of time to rule out options.
Just out of interest. I have thinking about this a lot recently. @JohnAtl too I will ask directly. I consider Folders to be skeumorphic in a sense… Whatever: but are the characters that we put up on the screen and read as we do on paper books, the ‘letters’ I might say, “Skeuomorphs”? They are quite elaborate electronic constructions meant as UI conveniences for the human mind really, nothng intrinsic about them regarding computers?
I am quite sure when the robots rule there will be no such things. Just… well whatever it will be for them.
My take is that characters (letters) aren’t objects, so they are not skeuomorphic. They are the same “thing” on paper and on screen.
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Nice reply and a line of reasoning that hadn’t occured to me. Thanks.
I loved the old ‘inkpot’ and so on that were part of older Mac set ups. I wish they still were there really. The ‘classic’ ones.
Thank you 
(20 characters limit - now this is meta 
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Folders are definitely skeuomorphic, and it’s a shame we haven’t been able to move beyond them. The crux of my supervisor’s research is that the classification systems underlying most software is wrong (technically, it is ontologically misrepresentative) and that we should be conceptualizing the data in software differently (namely it should be a collection of instances and their attributes first, and we should classify it afterwards). More here:
https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.42.10.1437
A simple way of thinking about this is that everything should be smart groups. (Of course, we would need drastically different approaches to computing to make this work.)
I’m of the mind that apps like Hook and Roam are getting closer to the “next step” beyond folders, but I’m not sure they’re there yet.
(Note that I just butchered an incredibly complicated subject matter…)
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First time I’ve read a metaphysical term used in reference to folders and software, love it! That takes software to “a higher level.” 
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Nice, it is nice to know I am not the only one! I more or less am on the same page as you and your super on this Ryan. It filled a gap in my knowledge at the that level ‘under the hood’ though. Our habits and presuppositions carry through in the most surprising ways. That was really interesting to me to hear and I not suprised.
I found in my own case Smart Groups, at the UI level, to be far more congenial than the vestiges of the old, cumbersome and quite unintuitive ‘filing cabinet’. My own view was that filing cabinets were totally counter intuitive as were many old Library classification systems.
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Hook looks very interesting but it does not appear to have an iOS version. If not, it is limited for when I’m using my iPad, which I do a lot of my work on.
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I wouldn’t think so, as characters are abstract, and don’t represent a physical thing. This is true whether they are digital or written with a pen.
Words can represent physical objects, actions, etc., but don’t mimic the objects physically (at least not for English). Words can result in retrieval of the properties of objects or actions. If someone reads the word “pull” or “push” then performs a pulling or pushing movement, the kinematics of their movement will change based on if the movement agrees with the word.
Neumorphic seems different than skeuomorphic. Where skeuomorphic design attempts to emulate common objects in their entirety (e.g. a notebook), neumorphic seems more about representing interface elements so that they seem to have physical capabilities. This could capitalize on Affordance Theory, as proposed by Gibson, where the UI elements would visually “tell us” their capabilities. Based on our goals and context, we would select the appropriate action. A good real world example of this is a coffee mug. There are three basic ways to interact with the coffee cup, grasping across the mouth, by the handle, or around the body of the mug. If our intention is to put the cup in the dishwasher, we would probably grasp across the mouth. If we intend to drink hot coffee, we would use the handle. If the coffee has cooled, or we intend to warm our hands, we might grasp the body of the cup. Interestingly, when we watch someone perform these actions, motor areas of our own brain become active to help us understand the intention of the action.
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Indeed, that was the direction I was going. Not on the exact same track as you though, similar one though.
I think those distinction is accurate on thinking about it. It is interesting what makes something ‘look’ physical too. Shadows seem de rigeur 
I don’t want to delve into ‘use/mention’ regarding letters and words. I think phonetic sounds, inscriptions, electronic letters are ‘objects’ at some level and indeed, we study phonemes as such? As objects if you will? I do believe the attempt to find other ways of classification as @ryanjamurphy presents it is an useful excercise and might shed light on some topics here; indicentally maybe.
I would go further and ask how to conceptualize an ‘object’ or a “physical object” for that matter were I to pursue this and I hope we may do in some context one day. You know the standard arguments and points…
On computers what is, regarding DEVONthink 3, the status of ‘replicants’ for instance. Out of interest what do you think on that one? “Same” file in different places, two files kept exactly similar? Same problems apply to some 3D World concepts or words “book” for a good and parallel example. Thanks for the reference by the way, I didn’t know of this. Do you think a replicant on DEVONthink 3 is one “thing” or two?
Hm.
I think we’re talking about three things:
- Skeuomorphism in interface design (shadows and insets to invoke the metaphor and affordances of buttons, dials, etc.)
- Skeuomorphism in data modeling (taking “data” to be a very soft definition, including things like files and file groups/folders)
- “Skeuomorphism” in semiotics (relevant XKCD)
Re: (2), answering the question about whether a replicant of a file is a “new” or “second” thing isn’t that useful, to me. The question “what metaphors are we missing in how we organize our digital lives?” is the big one. A replicant is actually still an anachronism to me, as it places a “file” in a new workspace. The file being replicated is the canonical thing. When we collate some of the same files in different places, what are we doing? In the physical world we’re piling things in folders–and it’s actually impossible to replicate a thing in different folders a la DEVONthink, but DEVONthink’s replicants still invoke that metaphor. In Hook, on the other hand, we’re creating a “mesh”. Again, I’m not sure the latter is the definitive next direction, but the fact that Hook meshes can’t really be created in the physical world is a sign that it’s going somewhere.
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Thanks for point Hook app out to me as well @ryanjamurphy I didn’t know how far thing were going in this direction to be honest. Thanks for the reply about how you think about replicants too. It is of interest to me outside tech.
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Well, Pris is my favorite replicant 
In DEVONthink, replicants seem to be different paths to the same destination, and we use the one most convenient based on where we are.
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Ha ha. So you think of them as sort of place holders or pointers to one ‘thing’ I might say. Thanks for the reply, it is interesting to me. I loved that film too, far better than… well you know that Sci Fi film that cannot be named 
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