(Originally published on Quora on September 20th, 2013)

A lot has been written about skeuomorphism, the idea that digital objects should look like their physical counterparts. Speculation went wild from the day that Jony Ive, Apple’s former head of industrial design, had taken the helm for software design as well after the letting go of Scott Forstall.

Steve Jobs, the rumors said, was an advocate of skeuomorphism, and so was Forstall. But Ive was a famous objector, and had many supporters withi...