The other day one of our twitter followers recommended we feature Courier by Real Mac Software. It would seem like an obvious app to feature here, given the amount of ‘design’ that went into the app. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s a good app. If I want to upload some pictures to Flickr, I don’t want to pull out an envelope and sit through animations and drag virtual stamps in. I want to have it up there, and be done with it. Dropzone serves that task way better and it looks good in a realistic way. I like skeuomorphic user experiences, but not at the cost of speed and efficiency. I like that the iBooks app has a book like feel and you can slowly turn a page, but only because I can also instantly switch pages by tapping on either side.
Which is why I want you to go check out this brilliant analysis by Aaron Weyenberg on realistic user interfaces and their usability implications.
