Apple’s design problems aren’t skeuomorphic:

Apple software — especially its self-declared future, iOS — needs some serious overhaul both in aesthetics and experience, and far more in the latter department.

Scott Forstall wasn’t kicked out of Apple for using skeuomorphism—that would be like kicking someone for using the color blue. It’s a tool, some like it, others don’t.

As John Gruber put it:

Forstall was an obstacle to collaboration within the company. Now he’s gone, and his responsibilities are being divided between four men who foster collaboration: Ive, Mansfield, Cue, and Federighi.

Likewise, Ive’s number one goal will most likely not be to remove skeuomorphism from Apple’s products. Kontra continues:

Much as the “lickable” Aqua UI ended up doing a decade ago, a serious mistake would be to hide many of these behavioral, functional and experiential software problems under a more attractive, aesthetically unifying display layer, such as:

• A more modern, less cheesy Game Center redesign that still doesn’t have a social layer.
• An aesthetically unified iTunes without appreciably better content discoverability.
• A Siri app without the background linen but still lacking much deeper semantic integration with the rest of the iOS.
• A Maps app without the ungainly surreal visual artifacts but still missing a robust search layer underneath.
• An iBooks app without the wooden shelves or inner spine shadow, but still with subpar typography and anemic hyphenation and justification.
• A Podcast app without the tape deck skeuomorphism, but with all the same navigational opaqueness.

In the end, what’s wrong with iOS isn’t the dark linen behind the app icons at the bottom of the screen, but the fact that iOS ought to have much better inter-application management and navigation than users fiddling with tiny icons.

Ultimately, removing or adding skeuomorphism wouldn’t make a big difference. Ive has a much bigger challenge ahead of him.