>Apple knows what they’re doing
They did, once upon a time. Look at the aesthetics of recent iterations of iCal though, and you can see that they really, really don't anymore.
They did, once upon a time. Look at the aesthetics of recent iterations of iCal though, and you can see that they really, really don't anymore.
Meanwhile as the post points out, these textures and animations are important comforts, cues and guides for many users, especially newer users.
Obviously most people don't think it is, but that's a personal preference rather than a statement of fact.
I think the linen backgrounds that are appearing in OS X and iOS are a case in point - they don't add anything practical (in theory I think they were meant to represent the bottom layer though that's been inconsistently used so it's questionable whether any real benefit is being gained) but broadly speaking I think people agree that the texture is nice and as a result people seem to be more positive about them.
It's mostly faux-design sense (everybody is a snobish designer these days and everybody is for "minimalism") than anything really problematic with an app that has some faux-leather as its background.
It's design decisions like this, which really ramped up in Lion, that I think are fueling the present-day reaction against skeumorphism.
The calendar app is a work of supreme laziness on the part of its designers, and the excuse seems to be that it is pandering to a class of user both looked down upon and considered unlikely to actually use the app.
And while graphic designers love it, UX designers often find the expectations raised by the metaphor conflict with the actual implementation. A great example of this is book apps, in which the notion of "pages" and "bookmarking" is presented in a familiar visual style, but the actual experience is radically different.