"They" already said that when iOS abandoned skeuomorphism, and "they" were damn right. A friend of mine who is not even a tech guy put it very bluntly: "Apple used to change things to make better phones, now they change things to keep up with what others are doing".
They abandoned skeumorphism because pixel perfect design doesn't work when you have multiple size screens. At the time they had two - a 3.5 inch screen and a 9.7 inch screen. Now they have four different iPhone screen sizes and three different iPad screen sizes.
When you had a picture as the background of your screen in 2010, you needed different images for different screen resolutions - 1 and 2x for the 3.5 inch iPhone and 1x for the 9.7" inch iPad. Then the iPhone 5 came out with a different ratio - you couldn't just stretch the image and make it look decently. Then two years later you had the 6 and 6+ phones with different ratios. Then different ratios for split screen iPad in different orientations.
Skeuomorphic doesn’t mean using background images, it’s just a matter of trying to have GUI elements look and behave like physical objects would. You can do that using textures.
How would they look if you squished it for 25%, 50% or 75% split screen view on the iPad? How would it look on the iPad Pros? In landscape? In portrait?
Usually what you're doing in those cases is that part of the image are stretchable and other parts are fixed. It's a technic that's been used for rounded buttons for ages, and can be applied to pretty much anything. That's also part of xcode (unless it's been removed).
But generally, you can easily have those kinds of design work with any kind of screen dimensions. It won't look completely similar from one size to another, but still look realistic (bigger screen -> bigger objects, or more space between objects).
"They" already said that when iOS abandoned skeuomorphism, and "they" were damn right. A friend of mine who is not even a tech guy put it very bluntly: "Apple used to change things to make better phones, now they change things to keep up with what others are doing".