Critiquing the Nokia N9, running Meego, Dan Hill shows us how product reviews really should be written.

“…The skeuomorphic nonsense that incomprehensibly pervades apps like Apple’s own Contacts, Calendar, iBooks, GameCenter, Find My Friends et al – all awkward faux-leather, wood and paper stylings – is is of such questionable “taste” it threatens to damage the overall harmony of iOS with its discordant notes. You cannot derive value from the idle suggestion of such textures on screen; they are physical properties and should be experienced as such, or not at all. Yet Apple’s design team will not explore those physical properties, merely sublimating their desire for such qualities into a picture of leather, a picture of wood. It recalls Marcel Duchamp’s critique of ‘retinal art’ i.e. intended only to please the eye. This has no place in Nokia’s design universe, thankfully. The design work here is intrinsically of its medium and pleases the eye consistently, without resorting to cheap imagery, but it also pleases the hand and the ear rather more than the iPhone.”

Link: Portable cathedrals (domusweb.it, via)