What is soo bad that it makes people afraid of change, give headaches, cause confusion, or just makes uses apathetic to upgrade to shiny gradients, colors, shadows, animations etc?
Well I tell you one thing? I HATE BLINDING WHITE ALL CAPS office 2013. I HATE FULL SCREEN. I hate less functionality. I hate no buttons (Apple is removing all buttons in iOS 8 because it ... gulps does not have real ones). Is there anyone who hates the leather bound address book as much as we all hate Metro and flat 72 pixel fonts?
Anyone like seeing only 2 videos instead of 7 on youtube on our phones due to big fonts and flat elements?
There is a reason Skuemorphism was used. Namely ... IT WORKS. People can replicate real world objects quite efficiently and maybe just maybe the reason real world objects look, act, and function a particular way is because it was THE BEST way to use it. Nothing is wrong folks with pretty gradients and animations that are soothing to the reader. I can still read my MS word documents fine in older colorful versions of Office. No really I can really read without distraction when a distinction between element panes are visible in non-white anti skuemorphism crowd.
Proof: Look at the Iphone 1? The reason Apple won the 1st battle from MS and blackberry overnight is because they were pretty and drop dead gorgeous. Android won battle 2 but still Apple never got defeated.
If IOS looked like it did in 2007 it frankly wouldn't sell. People wanted the gum drops of Safari.