Where Apple differs from its competition isn’t in aesthetic beauty, it’s in the company’s ability and willingness to make decisions on behalf of its users. […] Apple’s take is to remove complexity and make choices long before the user sees the product.

It’s an argument that’s often used by Apple fans to defend the “Apple prison” accusations — I’ve used this line of reasoning myself. But here’s the thing — and I’m saying this as a die-hard Apple fan — even though this used to be true when the iPhone and iOS first came out, I don’t think our argument holds water any more. We’re starting to see more complexity sneaking into iOS and Mac OS X, and even though the veneer of simplicity is still highly visible, there be trouble beneath the surface.

And then I read Federico Viticci’s excellent interview with John Siracusa, in which John sums up the situation perfectly:

Simplicity is great, as iOS has shown. But there’s a difference between conceptual simplicity and visual simplicity. Just hiding controls does make things appear simpler, but it doesn’t actually make them any simpler. The complexity is now just hidden. Similarly, removing features that few people use is a good idea, but like any good idea, it can be taken too far. At a certain point, you’re just making your application worse for everyone, even new users.

You can’t always tweak or refactor an existing application into the beautiful thing you’re envisioning. Sometimes the only way to achieve true simplicity is to start over with a new concept for the whole app.

The first iterations of iOS and Mac OS X were great because they did just that — they started over with a new concept. But complexity creep is inevitable, and the big challenge for Apple now is how they’re going to manage that. Jonathan Ive’s influence will certainly help, but perhaps there’s even a case to be made for (gasp!) borrowing a page from Google’s playbook.