For the many early years of its existence, Chrome sported a pretty distinctive – perhaps even iconic? – look to its tabs…

…with even the “new tab” button looking like a tab embryo waiting to be brought into existence. At some point, however, during one of the redesigns, the tabs have been flattened to look like many other round rects in the UI, and the new tab button asked to dress in the minimalistic button uniform every other button was already wearing:

Here’s a new example of this trend. iOS’s memorable tooth-shaped keyboard key extensions, there with us since 2007… that is, until yesterday, when iOS 27 designers turned them into Yet Another Round Rect:

There would be a time in my life where I’d see these two as a triumph of minimalism and consistency. But I feel differently today.

I don’t even mean that tabs should look a certain way to help users, or that skeuomorphism absolutely needs to come back, or that someone has to brush up on shape coding. I mostly feel that way because modern interface design practice – these ubiquitous round rects on ever-present white backgrounds, set in one of the near-identical neogrotesque fonts – is just, once again, so… boring. It’s not fun, not inspiring, not – in any real way – exciting.

I also have this feeling that “consistency” might be just an excuse. Defaulting to round rects could be running away from a challenge; the original shapes would be harder to make work, but it was absolutely possible to do that, given enough effort and care.

Occasionally a designer is faced with an important question that awaits an honest answer: are you doing something to make your user’s life simpler, or yours? It’s not that the first answer is always better than the second, of course; sometimes you have to put on your mask before helping others. But, without knowing all the considerations, I feel that way about these two examples – and a tinge of sadness seeing those unique shapes bulldozed.

(And yeah, I know I’m not doing the case any favours by comparing these to teeth. I think originally the key shape might have been typewriter-inspired; early iPhone’s keyboards were making what to me felt like typewriter-esque sounds too.)