This is my understanding of how we ended up with today's flat UIs with <i>less affordances</i> even though many (most?) users dislike them. HN can tell me if I was told incorrectly.<p>1) GUIs in 1980s like MS Windows 1.0/2.0 had flat design[1]. The buttons were flat. No drop shadows. The "flatness" was not a deliberate design intention but simply the first iteration of a graphical UI to supplant text mode DOS console.<p>2) In 1990s, MS Windows 3.0/3.1 introduced 3-dimensional sculpted buttons. An visible improvement in UI affordances. Windows 95 further extended the 3D look where whole window edges, etc had sculpted look.<p>3) This era includes the Apple Mac OS X GUI ("Aqua
) that had 3D look and buttons had depth. It includes the Steve Jobs quote, “one of the design goals was when you saw it you wanted to lick it."<p>4) The zenith of affordances is reached with Windows Vista/7 "Aeroglass" where windows could cast translucent drop shadows on the desktop. Effects like that required heavier computation such as "alpha channels". Hardware-assisted (premium graphics card) was required. Desktop computing power (both cpu and graphics chip) to deliver all this GUI effects was not a big deal. This was the time period before "skeumorphism" became persona non grata.<p>4) iPhone/Android mobile phones come on the market in 2007/2008 with low-powered CPUs and precious battery life. Now, things like painting 3D heavy UI and rendering translucent drop shadows are seen as a massive extravagance. A waste of cpu & battery power. In 2012 Windows 8 and 2013 iOS 7, everybody removes the last 20 years of 3D GUI affordances and makes everything flat again.<p>5) To make the GUI consistent between mobile phones and desktops, Microsoft makes the desktops flat as well even though there is abundance of computing power. Therefore Windows 8/8.1 looks like Windows 1.0 again[1]. The Apple Mac OS X is also flatter but at least they kept the windows casting drop shadows.<p>What's interesting is that the marketingspeak from Microsoft/Apple/Google about "flat design" talks about it being "modern", "clean", and "fresh". To me, it seems like it's really all about the current limitations of mobile phone cpus and forcing a UI consistency to the desktop users. Basically, it's punishing the desktop users by enforcing the lowest common denominator across device platforms.<p>Hopefully, we'll get a new trend where everybody will go back to styling GUI elements with some hints of "clickability" without gratuitous skeumorphism. We just need some balance.<p>[1] flat UI in 1985: <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=windows+1.0&source=lnms&tbm=isch" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=windows+1.0&source=lnms&tbm=...</a>