TIL of Skeuomorphs, objects designed to look like an older version of the same object. Examples include fake buckles on leather shoes, rivets on jeans, mechanical arms on slot machines, and digital apps designed to look like their analog equivalent.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeuomorph

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  1. Specifically when the new design does not need to include elements of the old design like an ornamental light fixture designed with plates to catch falling wax. Or things like the qwerty keyboard layout, cars with features borrowed from carriages, electric cars with unnecessary features like grills or charging systems that resemble fuel pumps.

    It was especially common in the early days of digital and in early smartphone apps, if you look at the default iPhone apps now and then you’ll see most of them more strongly resemble their analog equiv, like the notes app looks like a notepad, the calendar app like a calendar page.

    Cameras incorporate a lot of skeuomorphs, like the sound of a camera shutter on a digital camera or the open/close lens effect when turning a camera on.

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