Calendar, Notes and Contacts are all explainable — they reference real world things (even if they shouldn’t). My Mum likes that her calendar looks more like a Filofax than Outlook 2003. Fair enough. A Filofax is a thing. I get it. And the Compass app is based on a compass. Another thing.
But I’m pretty sure there’s not a thing in my physical living room called a ‘Find My Friends’. The metaphor is empty. It’s not referring to anything. It’s just a leather texture.
A great piece about skeuomorphic design by Jon Gold