To me, it's not newer vs. older. Things like flat design and skeuomorphism can work just fine if they follow the principles of human interface design. The problem I see is that we seem to be drifting away from those principles in a lot of ways.
Major OSes seem to be worse at having consistent interfaces. Trying to make desktop interfaces work like the constrained screens of phones and tablet by hiding scrollbars, etc. is a step back. Useful animations are a step forward, but useless and slow animations are a step back.
However, web interfaces have gotten better since the death of Flash. They're not perfect, or maybe even good, but they're much better than previously.
So it's a mixed bag. I prefer modern web design to that of the past, but prefer older OS design to the present mostly.
Are you joking? Desktop YouTube is one of the worst UIs I've had to deal with. Controls constantly popping up over the video, annotations on by default, autoplay to the next video on by default. If you're in full screen mode and switch to another app, then come back, the video is just ... gone. It's not on the page, but it's not full-screen anymore, either. Buttons and options that don't show up consistently on every video. No way to fix the aspect ratio of videos created by morons. Crap everywhere on the page. I seriously find it hard to believe that anyone would consider YouTube to have a good video player interface, let alone the best.
Thank you! I agree completely. It's like there's some flow that it's optimized for, but I have no idea what that flow is. I want to find music, then play music. Half the time when I search, it doesn't find anything, even though I know it's there. The other half the time I search, it shows me an overwhelming number of possibilities, each slightly different, with no way to tell which was the one I intended. Then there's the "card" that pops up with what's playing, but which won't come up when I need it to, and always comes up when I'm trying to do something else. The buttons to do something with the music, like add it, remove it, etc. are never where I think they're going to be, so I end up playing point and click games like some bad adventure from the 90s. "Does this control do it? Nope. How 'bout this one? Nope. This one? That's it! I've unlocked a basic feature that should have been obvious!"
Major OSes seem to be worse at having consistent interfaces. Trying to make desktop interfaces work like the constrained screens of phones and tablet by hiding scrollbars, etc. is a step back. Useful animations are a step forward, but useless and slow animations are a step back.
However, web interfaces have gotten better since the death of Flash. They're not perfect, or maybe even good, but they're much better than previously.
So it's a mixed bag. I prefer modern web design to that of the past, but prefer older OS design to the present mostly.