Again, I consider this far less offensive and distracting than the undesign of, say, the garish red "Create" button and the garish blue "Search" buttons that pop right out of the Google Calendar interface. And you can actually have your calender occupy the center of the window in Calendar, which is aggravatingly impossible with Google.

I'm not trying to point to an Apple/Google horserace, but seriously, there are other aspects to design then skeutomorphicness. Textures that appear as subtle gradients in your periphary are barely noticeable for most the vast majority of the population. I mean, just ask a non-geek iOS user what they think of the silk texture in iOS and prepare for a blank stare.