“Apple, as a design leader, is not only capable of doing this, they have a responsibility for doing it,” he said. “People expect great things from them.”

Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, declined to comment.

Apple’s customers do not seem to have serious qualms about the design choices the company has made as they continue to buy iPhones and iPads at a healthy clip. But within the circles of designers and technology executives outside Apple who obsess over the details of how products look and work, there has been a growing amount of grumbling in recent years that Apple’s approach is starting to look dated.

The style favored by Mr. Forstall and Mr. Jobs is known in this crowd as skeuomorphism, in which certain images and metaphors, like a spiral-bound notebook or stitched leather, are used in software to give people a reassuring real-world reference.

In contrast, Microsoft, not known as a big risk-taker, has been praised recently for taking greater creative risks in the design of its software than Apple has. It has come up with a visual style that is now used throughout its computer, mobile and game products. It relies heavily on typography and sheets of tiles that provide access to programs and are updated with photos and other online information. It is not yet clear whether this approach will be a hit with people who do not spend time thinking about design.

Image The fine linen texture to this iPhone background is a look that Steve Jobs encouraged.

Bill Flora, a former Microsoft designer who created the earliest prototypes of its new visual style, said Apple had not been innovative enough in the design of its software. “I have found their hardware to be amazing and sophisticated, and I have found their software to be kind of old school,” said Mr. Flora, who now has his own design firm, Tectonic, in Seattle. “Their approach really wasn’t what I was taught as a designer in design school.”

Even internal critics of Apple’s software designs say that some references to physical things are still useful. The trash bin on the Mac, for example, is a much-used metaphor for deleting files, one that is unlikely to go away soon. There is also a function in the new Passbook app that runs deleted loyalty and payment cards through something resembling a paper shredder. Some Apple designers see that as a good way of reinforcing the idea that potentially sensitive information has been wiped from the device.