Comment What a troll. (Score 1) 980
The guy from the article apparently is too attached to the past - he calls his bicycle a skateboard... and the article's first page of comments about the microwave bit say it all about how good and relevant his opinion is.
The Ribbon is being kicked around too much, but maybe it is because it actually deserves it. I find its principle of a task-oriented UI good but poorly executed, because those ribbons are a mess of icons.
I am not a fan of the *visual style* of iCal and do agree that skeuomorphic design (1:1 metpahors...) is being abused in detriment of good User Interface Experiences - it's giving more room to gloriously beautifying pixels than the content. On the other hand, I used Windows Phone 7 for a few months and while I agree that it is a fresh experience, it does get tiring after a while because it is too far off from what we are used to. It leads to relying too much on content as the means to define the visual experience. This makes it a problem because most content just sucks in terms of design or is too simplistic to make it immersive.
What is needed is a careful balance between UI design that relates to our experiences, both in UIs and the physical world, and content, so that this does not get overshadowed by the UI.
I think the author is just uninformed and being selfish in the way he writes. Going back to a 20th century UI because I'm too stubborn to accept UI evolution? No thanks.
Maybe I should start calling my laptop a typewriter...