I tried all those things and IMO turning on Bold Text helped the most.
I've had Bold Text on and Dark Mode on since 2013 because my eyes are failing and looking at any all-white UI makes them hurt.
As for the skeuomorphism, I never got the gripe for the green felt poker table, that was Game Center. It made perfect sense. How were rainbow bubbles (literally 3D rainbow bubbles that floated around!) in iOS 7 Game Center an upgrade? What did that have to do with gaming?
I also quite liked the iPad interpretation of the calendar app, with the leather texture and all. It was designed to work on the iPad. iPhone users didn't have that level of detail. They did that to promote the iPad as a larger device. It made sense. It made it fun to use and interact with and I didn't have to learn how to use it. It worked exactly like a real datebook calendar. Again, didn't understand the gripe.
The Notepad paper in Notes? The 'slide to unlock' screen? Those made sense. Back then Apple had the upper hand in being as accessible to technophobic grandparents as they were to kids just starting to use devices for the first time. I mean, you could hand Grandma an iPad and she'd take to it as easily as a 6 year-old. But try that with an Archos tablet running Android 1.x and good luck with grandma!
I was there during the first run of flat design. CP/M. DeskMate. Amiga WorkBench 1.x. Windows 1.x. Even early Mac System software. It was NOT a good time. Visually or otherwise. We had nothing better at the time, we worked with what we had. I do NOT want to keep revisiting the 1980s. It was great for music and that was pretty much it. I never got why folks crave nostalgia for the '80s. It was a horrible decade of wacky fashion, horrible interior design (sunk in bathtubs, carpeted bathrooms, mirrored walls, Corporate Memphis) the start of the failure of the War on Drugs, Reagonomics, and primitive computing at best. If there's any apt way to convey what iOS 7 when it launched reminded me of, going with the '80s theme, try New Coke, yet another failure. Only the difference was the Coca Cola corp responded to the backlash, but Apple and everyone else who followed them just said 'eh, ignore the haters, they'll be used to it in a couple of years!'
The worst bit is that the many who wax nostalgia for the 1980s never lived in that decade. They are likely Gen Z or A, and their only way of knowing older UIs that were skueomorphic were likely seeing Grandma's old Vista laptop and that's why they view it as dated and flat UI today as 'modern' because they literally never had to live with the era of The Oregon Trail and CP/M. You ain't ever gonna know what the 1980s were like unless you lived them, and no amout of synthwave playlists are gonna change that.
