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Its not shallow, it makes the app easier to use and therefore better designed.

Also, perception is reality.

I contest the idea that any two apps are so similar that something as trivial as list-refresh mechanism could push one over the top.

I look forward to competing with you one day!

Seriously though, you contest the idea that an interface with interactions which hide complexity and have been shown to be pretty intuitive could be decisive in how users value a product?

No, I agree that in the current mobile app world UI flourishes really do make a difference in how users perceive an application. I'm hopeful for the day when such flourishes are so common that they are no longer perceived as valuable and we can get back to working on things that matter.

This isn't just a cosmetic thing; it makes it substantially easier to perform an operation (in this case refreshing) and to see the status of that operation.

Don't bet on UX enhancements ever going away, by the way; people come up with new things all the time. Pull-to-refresh didn't come from any platform vendor; it came from a third party Twitter client.

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