Jony Ive. Photo: Alex Washburn/Wired Photo: Alex Washburn/Wired Photo: Alex Washburn/Wired Photo: Alex Washburn/Wired

The new iOS 7 is radically simplified, incredibly flat, colorful, and multi-layered. It is, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook, “the biggest change to iOS since iPhone.” And it may be one of the best things yet designed by Jony Ive, who announced iOS 7 in a short video at Apple's World Wide Developer conference.

Ive didn't offer a blow-by-blow account of details; he remained seated in the audience next to Laurene Jobs. Instead, his video comments served up a succinct design philosophy: “There is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity. In clarity. In efficiency. True simplicity is derived from so much more than the absence of clutter and ornamentation. It’s about bringing order to complexity.” He could have said that in any of his videos about Apple’s hardware. But Ive was finally saying them about software, in his new role leading Apple’s interface design. Apple, in other words, is leaving behind iOS’s gaudy recent past in favor of the radical simplicity that made it the world’s most valuable company.

Among the many features and UI ideas, the main design points were:

–A revamped icon system, based on a grid that harmonizes the many tiles of the UI

–Redesigned typography

–A new color palette

–Distinct functional layers for apps and navigation screens

–Abundant use of translucency that creates hierarchy among layers

–Animations that add depth and live information

–A swipe-up control center for commonly used functions

iO6’s fake wood, leather, and felt are dead. After Ive’s video was over, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, came on and declared, “We completely ran out of green felt! And wood. This has got to be good for the environment!” But Ive’s words were shorthand for a battle over design philosophy that’s been brewing ever since the very first Mac. iOS 7 is a recognition that Apple’s previous design languages couldn’t scale to the growth of the phone as a computing powerhouse. Let’s dig in.

Why Apple made so much fake leather to begin with

Skeuomorphism, which is simply an ornamental design meant to ape another material, has become a hip thing to hate. Just ask any number of designers who’ll tell you that the leather-bounded calendars and reel-to-reel tape-decks of iOS6 are tacky, garish, and trite.

But skeuomorphism is really just the extreme manifestation of the root metaphors that are now embedded in all of our computer interactions. When you’re looking at computer windows that layer on top of each other like paper, you’re looking at metaphorical rules for how computer interactions should behave, drawn from the physical world. That particular problem of making interactive "layers"—when in fact they’re just new objects being redrawn side-by-side to look as if they’re layered—was one that Steve Jobs obsessed over during the creation of the first Mac OS. He knew that in order to teach people what a computer could do when no one had ever owned a computer before, he had to teach by analogy.

Smart phones have exceeded the metaphors that used to define them.You cannot create an intuitive computer interface without metaphors like these. Moreover, it’s almost impossible to explore computer metaphors without creating skeuomorphic flourishes to some degree or another. For example: What should the “trash bin” on your computer desktop look like? After all, it doesn’t really behave like a trash can. Should it look like a trash can? If not, what could it possibly look like while still being totally intuitive? If you can’t figure out a better answer than a trash can—and I bet you can’t—then you, my friend, are guilty of skeuomorphism.

But to understand why all the ornamentation in iOS6 is sacrilege to so many designers, you need to know a little bit about how designers themselves think about their discipline. When you hear designers talking about “honesty” “integrity of materials” and even design as the process of “solving problems,” you’re hearing echos of the Bauhaus, the German design school where architects like Mies van der Rohe dreamed up the tenets of modern design almost 100 years ago.

Perhaps the most important Bauhaus maxims of all are: 1. Form should follow function 2. Materials should be suited to the task they’ve been drafted for. Consider an enduring classic like the Marcel Breuer B33 chair, with its iconic cantilevered seat. Beuer designed that cantilever not just to be a showpiece, but to show what steel—and only steel—could do at that time. He didn’t filigree the metal to look like something else. He chromed it to emphasize that it was metal, rather than wood.

That is the modernist tradition that industrial designers like Jony Ive live and breathe. Steve Jobs considered the Bauhaus one of his most important influences. So you can see why designers revolt when software metaphors get developed so far that they don't actually add any additional functional benefit.

But even skeuomorphism can be a boon. Many non-designers absolutely love the decorative flourishes of iOS6, precisely because they aren’t functional. Jobs knew the magical appeal of fakery from Apple’s earliest days, and so, in spite of his adoration of Bauhaus ideals, he aspired to “lickable” interfaces that immediately enchanted people with how lifelike they were. Skeuomorphism isn’t motivated by design decisions at all—but rather the magic of increasing screen resolutions.

This was design in the service of salesmanship rather than function, which is great for selling computers and iPhones. The only problem with that is that hardware makers no longer need to impress people so much with how high-res their screens are—resolution has become a game of increments in the last ten years. Smartphone interfaces, meanwhile, must solve even greater problems.

Why it matters to the future

Apple’s early OS metaphors were meant to teach people how to use computers. Likewise, the skeuomorphism of Apple’s early iterations of iOS was intended to make touchscreens friendly, non-threatening, and familiar. The reason iOS has always been restrictive—with side-to-side scrolling as the only real overarching navigation—was to make the first touchscreens too simple not to understand.

The problem now is that the iOS is no longer in the position of having to teach anyone about touchscreens. Even three-year-olds get them. The smartphone’s greatest problem today isn’t teaching people that there’s a virtual space for doing everyday tasks. Rather, it’s teaching people that they no longer have to use their computers anymore. The functions of phones themselves are growing even as the actual size of a phone screen is approaching its natural limit. Smart phones have, in many ways, exceeded the metaphors that used to define them. Thus, in order to do more complex interactions on the screens, and to keep those interactions uncluttered, you have to strip down the design language. This is what Ive means when he talks about “bringing order to complexity.”

With iOS 7, the revamped look is the sexiest, most obvious declaration that something has changed. The new design is “unobtrusive and deferential” so that the UI “recedes, elevating your content”—rather than competing, for example, against the pictures you’re trying to get to on Facebook and Instagram. But the new design language also lies in service to iOS 7’s broad architectural and navigational changes, such as the layer of cards that allow you flip between browser windows and the tiles that allow you scan through apps. Without a simplified design language, that increased complexity would become a jumble; without a unified design language, it would be too easy to confuse some elements with the apps or websites themselves. Even a detail like the transparency that you see at work in iOS 7 helps to clarify the relationship between content and the contextual navigation that surrounds it. As Federighi, Apple's software engineering SVP, put it, iOS 7 has “a look of precision and a sense of purpose”

Ive, in his pitch for flatter design to his engineering cohort Apple, reportedly argued that skeuomorphism doesn’t stand the test of time. But he's also hinting at the functionality of a next generation of phones—when they’ll have to actively manage a network of connected devices, including, even, your desktop. In fixing what was broken with iOS6, Ive has really laid down the path to its future as the most important cog in our digital life. Apple, in giving Ive the license to enact such far-reaching change, is doubling down on the modernist ideals that made the company insanely great.