Agree a million times over. As long as Alan Dye is left in charge, an apostle of the Ives knows best clan, this mishmash of “design” will continue. As Marco of ATP said of Dye’s history, he loves to throw all useful tools in a junk drawer and obscure them. Only pure ego could allow for some of the absolutely abhorrent UI we are seeing in screenshots. Problem is, who has the “courage” and the acumen to clear the decks of this incompetency and poor execution?Scott wouldn't have been fired had Steve lived a few more years. Steve LOVED skeuomorphism ("When people see these icons, they should want to LICK them") and him and Scott were pals. If Steve had lived to see the argument during the iOS 6 Maps incident (which was wildly overblown) he would likely have defended Scott. The only reason they got away with firing him was simply because Steve 'conveniently' died shortly before.
If Steve had been in the same room as Ive when Ive had decided to flatten iOS 7 I can imagine he'd frown, say 'Nope' and walk out the room.
All I can imagine is that if skeuomorphic UI would have continued development, it would have made the Vision Pro even more exciting. I can only dream of what it could have evolved into, such as the UI we saw depicted in the first two Iron Man films (I still wanna 'toss' a file into the 'bin' like Stark did)
The need to return to the roots of OS X, stripping away the excess, and putting back the human in the interface is what is needed. A little skeuomorphic here and there is a good thing, as well as some 3 dimensional attributes for a 3 dimensional world. I have no issue with whimsy and a lively and animated interface, but blend some aqua in the glass and touch it up with some metal. Ship it Apple.