The Last Skeuomorph in iOS? ⇥ jarrettfuller.blog

Jarrett Fuller [sic]:

It’s 2026 and when I click the button on my glass phone, it makes a shutter sound! There are still skeuomorphs in iOS after all! The skeuomorphic designs of the early camera simulated a shutter closing and opening when you a took a photo but that’s long been replaced with just a subtle blink of the screen. And yet! The shutter sounds remains.

As Fuller writes, it might be the very last one. I would also make a case for the lock sound. It is not quite the padlock noise it used to be, but it definitely retains a mechanical quality that resembles what it is supposed to be.

One nitpick:

[…] (The irony is not lost on me that this new phone actually does have a physical shutter. That shutter, though, is silent. Apple is essentually simulating the shutter sound while a real shutter is actually firing.)

The new iPhone has physical aperture blades on its main camera, but I am pretty certain it, like all iPhone cameras before, continues to use an electronic rolling shutter.

Update: Via Marcin Wichary, there is lots of good discussion on Kottke, including skeuomorphic icons for apps I do not keep on my Home Screen and, thus, forgot about.