{**Transmission from the brain of Jony Ive**}
Flat, man. Flat is free. It doesn’t tell us what to think. We don’t need those metaphors. Skeuomorphism was a trap. A mental prison, holding us back. Let the people decide for themselves what a calendar or a notepad looks like, and their eyes will open wide
When their icons cease to be facsimiles, we stop trying to replicate analog behaviors. Then our tools can ascend, and we can finally imagine how they might ideally serve us.
Steve, dude. Steve got it. He SAW it. The future can’t depend on the past. You can’t ask people what they want. They don’t know they what they want. Because magic is invisible until we breathe it into existence.
Steve opened his third eye to where technology could take us. He discovered we weren’t meant to be ashamed of it. Technology could let us express ourselves, beautifully.
Steve *helped* me see too. Look at this Safari icon. It just is. Your imagination can roam its vast flat gradients. You can find yourself IN that Safari.
On my Safari I stared into the heart of a sunflower. The stem, the leaves, the sky, they all disappeared. I just saw color. The color saw me. It asked me what I felt. It let me interpret it on my own terms. That’s what I want for the people of this world. To see our software’s beauty in their own way.
I think they’re ready for it. Like the technicolor hues I’ve washed over our interface, the future will be bright. So bright it blinds some. But when their third eyes adjust, they’ll see it too. The magic in what we took away. The freedom they’ll find when they feel what flat means to them.
{**End transmission**}