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While I agree to some extent I think that the physical appearance on touch devices is necessary. I think that a button needs to look like a button, because I can't just explore with my mouse and wait for a rollover effect to understand what's clickable. Also trial and error to find a link could be a pretty frustrating process.

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There needs to be some way to show what is tappable but I don’t think that making all that look like buttons is necessary. If you look around iOS (especially on the iPhone or iPod touch) you will see that very few tappable elements actually do look like buttons, they don’t have to. Only potentially risky actions are brightly colored and look like buttons, for example “Send” or “Delete”. I would argue that it wouldn’t matter much if you were to ditch the gradients and shadows and just go with bright colors and rounded corners.

Not only is there some utility in skeuomorphs (to borrow another poster's reference), but they also excite the imagination. I've heard the opposite critique of iOS widgets, that their flaw is mimicking machine-panels rather than something else, more fantastic. That is part of the appeal of Windows Phone 7: that it looks like the panel of some device a bit further in the future.

As a friend says, "realism is the last refuge of a dwindling imagination".

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