With this approach, everything looks the same in the end. Imagine if television and video games also followed this flat trend? Imagine if reality followed this trend? It would look like this.
Image
Let's lose shadows, highlights, textures, and shading, and what we have is iOS7.
From my experiences as a user interface designer working for clients in different industries, some of their respective art directors didn't like skeumorphism not because it wasn't functional, but because they were intimidated by not knowing how to properly design it. I feel this is the case with the next generation of so called designers who come from the print industry.
Going with flat design is definitely not about objects, photos or real stuff, it's about visualizing symbols - which a dog is not. What you mean is possibly a reduction of a button to a less detailed version, but a visualized 3D button is just a tool to display an interactive element in a more familiar way. How you display a button is always up to you, may it be text, an image/symbol or a combination of both. However, if you need both it implies that either the wording or the image is not perfectly fit since one element has to fuel the other one's expression.
What I try to say here is that a naturalistically style of buttons and textures (which is all about gradients, material and stuff) is never needed to get us into thinking that one element is a button or one is an area.
Also, with skeumorphism, you can never really feel that your used set of graphics is ever perfect, because there will always be a better texture, a better gradient, a cooler way to imitate real material. Maybe that is the dilemma with certain clients in general, but I think about this very often. One has to remember the fact that a perfect visualization of a certain kind is not always better than an average execution of a familiar kind. So you are totally right up until the point that a client is not to be dealt with as an audience, which makes everythink way more complicated... and here we are, talking about more complicated things as clients!
I am also into designs, but not yet as professional as you. It may be the easy way, but with minimalism, I think it is possible to reach a state of perfection because we are in the realm of symbols and ideas, and we do not need to display real things but rather abstract interactive elements. However of course, it was not achieved in iOS 7 because its design (for example the contrast-lacking white UI set; there is a "night mode" dark style sheet as well, say Compass and Facetime etc) was realized by the marketing team, which is all about sending a message rather than answering it.
The only reason which would make me think that minimalism is a bad idea in general is because skeumorphism was a good way to let older or less tech-savvy people feel more comfortable around these intimidating complicated technological devices. It was possible in the past but I have severe doubts older people can catch up with these trends.
However, I really thank you for your insightful perspective. One never stops learning.
