Is flat design over hyped?<p>Apple design still have gradient, layers of transparency and text shadow to show depth. How is it flat? Well it is less skeuomorphism but I don't think that means flat.<p>I agree Microsoft's metro is flat, no shadow, no gradient and feels everything is on same plane.
Apple themselves isn't calling it flat.<p>It was just rumored that Apple would move to a flat designs before the keynote, and people just stuck with it.
It is actually an old, old, old, design term. "Flat design" isn't new to the designers I know who were designing back in the 1960s.<p>Just like everything else, software has fashion trends. Right now, flat is in. Once people get used to flat, something else will appear with the "innovative" look.
It's clearly not a flat style as we know it as the actual trend. It has some parts that show flatness, but overall is pretty not uniform. I watch the whole documentation, even installed on my iPhone and it's clearly buggy in terms of design's unity. It has a lot of work ahead to make it well executed.