The last great bastion of skeuomorphic design, Apple Inc., is rumored to be completely revamping its mobile OS, ahead of a relaunch at the Apple WDDC on June 10th. Speculation is that the next version of iOS, which powers Apple’s mobile devices, will both adopt a predominantly monotone look and abandon the textures associated with it for the last six years.

Whilst there are plenty of designers who still advocate skeuomorphic design, many more are embracing flat design. Flat design proposes that faux-3D effects, drop shadows, and anything else that imitates real-world objects in a screen-based environment is essentially deceitful. Proponents of flat design believe that simplifying, minifying and ‘flattening’ designs produces user interfaces that are easier to understand, easier to use and more suitable for the contemporary landscape.

The legions of web designers adopting flat design increased ten-fold when it was realised how simple flat design makes responsive design; a flat responsive design can produced in a fraction of the time of a skeuomorphic version. Increasingly it seems that the era of the mobile web is becoming synonymous with flat design.

Apple have a reputation for innovation: the mouse is one of theirs, as is the folder > file graphic interface. However, in recent years Apple have taken a back seat in innovative areas, preferring to adopt technology once it had proven valuable. In fact, you could argue that the most innovative thing Apple have produced since the first iMac has been their corporate branding: iPods were not the first MP3 players, the iPhone was not the first smart phone; they were simply the most well rounded, well branded and commercially appealing versions.

It would be a huge coup for flat design advocates therefore, if this barometer of commercial design abandoned its flagship look in favor of flat design.

Following a larger trend for reducing the number of executives and expanding the remit of those at the top, iOS7 is receiving its overhaul curtesy of Jonathan Ive — Apple’s Vice President of Industrial Design, who is responsible for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch hardware. Ive is reported to hold a certain distain for skeomorphism — preferred by both Steve Jobs and former iOS chief Scott Forstall — stating that software design based on physical metaphors does not stand the test of time.

Oft-repeated rumors currently circulating include a change to the current glossy lock screen, making it flat and black; a change to the pin-code entry, with the addition of round buttons; app icons losing their gloss; and alerts losing their texture to become white on black.

Counter rumors suggest that this is simply a clever marketing exercise by Apple to raise interest in iOS7, and like the hardware designed by Ive, any actual changes will be slow and incremental.

Will Apple switch to flat design for iOS7? Will a similar change to MacOS follow soon after? How will a non-skeuomorphic approach maintain a consistent iOS feel? As you might expect, designers have been publishing their ideas for some time, and we’ve included our favourites below.

iOS7 concept by Andre Almeida

iOS7 concept by Zikkzak
 

iOS7 concept by Nandor Tomas
 

iOS7 concept by AlHasan AlDasooqi
 

iOS7 concept by SimplyZesty
 

iOS7 concept by Peyman Eskandari
 

iOS7 concept by Dámaso Benítez
 

iOS7 concept by Alex Iv
 

iOS7 concept by Apfelpage
 

iOS7 concept by Oleg Turbaba
 

iOS7 concept by Agente Apple
 

iOS7 concept by Manu Gamero
 

iOS7 concept by Pieter Goris
 

iOS7 concept by Jesse Head
 

Which of these designs is your favorite? Should Apple adopt flat design? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

MotoCMS: Professional Website Builder – 66% off!

Registration is open for the W3C HTML5 training course that starts 3 June 2013 and lasts six weeks. Experienced trainer Michel Buffa will cover the techniques developers and designers need to create great Web pages and apps. Topics include video, animations, forms, and APIs to create location-based services, as well as offline applications. Students receive a certificate upon course completion. Register and learn more about W3DevCampus, W3C's online training for Web developers.

It can be hard to admit how much I’m driven by the pursuit of fun. I’ve been conditioned by American culture to think life, work, marriage, and kids should all be fun. I look for things that are fun, satisfying, existentially meaningful, etc., and the place where I’ve sought this most is in my work.

I’m an entrepreneur and a dreamer at heart. I enjoy exploring new ideas and planning their execution. Actually executing, though, not so much. I avoid execution with a 10-ft pole. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. Some of us are better at strategy than implementation and vice versa. However, it can very quickly turn into a bad thing. Just because you’re better at pushups than squats, doesn’t mean you should only do pushups.

But a lot of the career advice in the web industry is focused on finding your passion and zeroing in on it. Again, not bad advice, but a little misguided, in my opinion.

I’ve been searching for my passion since I was a teenager. I have yet to find it. And I think the reason I haven’t found it is because I have equated passion with fun. I’ve bought the lie that my passion, my purpose, is that thing which I love doing so much that it’s fun every time, all the time.

Recently I had a sobering conversation with a friend. We were talking about various business ideas and I was shooting them all down. Why? Because none of them passed my “fun” test. Meaning, there were elements to all of them that weren’t fun. I don’t literally have a “fun” test. It’s more of a subconscious screening process for the ideas that enter my brain. How could something be my passion if it felt like work?

My friend looked at me a little incredulously and said, “Dude, sometimes you just have to work.”

I felt like Homer Simpson having an epiphany. This seemed like very simple (and true) advice, yet it had never crossed my mind.

It’s strange how hard it is for this idea to connect. As a kid I played a lot of music. Hours and hours of practice every day from the ages of 5 to 15. It wasn’t fun at first. It took a lot of work to get to the point where sitting down at the piano felt like a pleasure and not a workout. Somehow I lost that concept in my later teens and 20s.

A big part of contentment and happiness is recognizing that you will not always be happy. It seems that many of the things that provide the most meaning in life are things that are not fun.

Raising children is not fun. There are times when I feel like I will end up on the floor in a fetal position, babbling to myself, if my kids disobey one more time. But raising children is satisfying. And it’s satisfying in way that is unlike anything else in my life. Watching them achieve success at something. Waking up every morning to hugs and kisses. Those things bring me great joy.

Realizing that things will never be perfect, that I will not always be happy, has a freeing effect. The pressure, guilt and the feeling that I’m doing something wrong, goes away.

The same is true in business. I’m not saying we shouldn’t pursue our passions. But understand that passion and meaning don’t equal a continual state of nirvanic-pleasure. (Yes, I made up that word).

Sometimes (often, I think), you just have to work and that’s not a bad thing. It doesn’t mean you’ve picked the wrong career, the wrong opportunity or the wrong life. Just the opposite, in fact. We have an opportunity to grow when we encounter resistance. At that point though, do we cut and run, or push through? Most of the time, I cut and run. And then I feel guilty. I feel like I’ve wasted my time. I begin to over-analyze all the choices that have led me to this place where life is hard. Lately, though, I think my failure has not been in my choices, but in avoiding that resistance. Avoiding what is not fun.

If happiness lives on the others side of resistance, it’s no wonder so many of us struggle to find it.

The post Sometimes You Just Have to Work appeared first on Treehouse Blog.