What is a digital only interface?

Ben Brooks wrote a great post that points to the problem to solve as Apple approaches a post-skeuomorphic future.

What is a digital only interface?

Is it really the interface, or lack thereof, of Clear, Letterpress, and others?

Or is it something that we have yet to see? Something more intuitive to a generation that has grown up not knowing what a floppy disk, Dayrunner, Rolodex, and analog telephone are.

This is the real problem for Apple to address. Referring to an analog metaphor doesn’t mean anything to people who are not familiar with it. I, for example, have never used a desktop calendar. Apple’s Calendar apps don’t appeal to my nostalgia so their usability problems are not easy to ignore. It may take time for the users who feel relief when they see notebook pages to accommodate to digital world or age out, but at some point these metaphors will be unrecognizable to the majority of Apple’s users, as well as tacky.