I see the current skeuomorphism trend, in a way, as cargo-culting. People saw some questionable, but not entirely dreadful uses of it (basically Apple's effort) and thought, "yeah that looks good! I'm going to give my app an awesome real life texture!"
Take the denim weather app design for example.
To what extent does a denim effect, that one would associate primarily with jeans, have anything to do with the weather? Did the designer think to question that, or was it just a case of mind-bogglingly detailed texture being the in thing?
I mean, if you can't come up with a reason for that particular choice of visual metaphor other than "it looks good", then was it really the right choice?
On a side note, I dislike the usage of this in native app design. You'd get those ridiculous apps in Windows XP with bonkers custom UIs, including Safari and Quicktime, for that matter. Now apps in OSX are skinned in odd ways (in Address Book's case, detrimentally so) and Windows 8 appears to be aiming for a consistent look and feel.
A todo app uses a design that makes it feel like a leather bound paper notebook is skeuomorphism. A weather application is with a denim texture is just a weather app with a denim texture. It could just as easily have a squiggly line texture or have a solid purple neon background. It might be ugly and stupid but that doesn't make it skeuomorphism.
Take the denim weather app design for example.
To what extent does a denim effect, that one would associate primarily with jeans, have anything to do with the weather? Did the designer think to question that, or was it just a case of mind-bogglingly detailed texture being the in thing?
I mean, if you can't come up with a reason for that particular choice of visual metaphor other than "it looks good", then was it really the right choice?
On a side note, I dislike the usage of this in native app design. You'd get those ridiculous apps in Windows XP with bonkers custom UIs, including Safari and Quicktime, for that matter. Now apps in OSX are skinned in odd ways (in Address Book's case, detrimentally so) and Windows 8 appears to be aiming for a consistent look and feel.