Agreed. HN loves to criticize Apple for forcing their UIs to mimic real-life (think Newsstand, leather stitching, etc), but still considers things like this desirable.
From a technical perspective, it's cool. Please don't use this on real sites!
From a technical perspective, it's cool. Please don't use this on real sites!
Ornament does not impact usability. In your two listed examples, they do not influence how the user interacts with the software.
This page flip is an example of mimicking real-world interaction and not just appearance.
The BAD kind of skeuomorphism is mimicking real life object behavior, when a different approach is both possible and more easy to use in software. That is, UIs like this:
http://codecpack.co/images/BlazeDVD.jpg
It has nothing to do about having faux-leather on your background.
Page flipping, which Apple uses in iBooks, is such an example of bad sceuomorphism.
But most other Apple's sceuomorphism criticism is about irrelevant fad designer preferences for clear-cut modernist LOOKS (e.g Metro style, flat etc). Those things are fads, and come and go. The same guys were all over "lickable interfaces, drop shadows, embossed elements, etc" a few years back. Actually, circa 2005-7, it was a whole movement of developers using such visual sceuomorphic and ornamental details, named the "Delicious Generation".
To see that the LOOK part of design (and not behavior, e.g look&feel) is all about fads, consider the case of Jonathan Ives again. The same "minimal, aluminum+glass" guy, was the one who designed the flower-power iMac back in the day: