A lot of those flourishes were actually design affordances, though, visually denoting certain functions and making things more intuitive. Not a fan of the super-flat design trend.
As you say super flat might not be great, but all the designs preceding the current trend where extremely harsh on the visuals.
From windows XP to 7, the windows default themes and colors where disturbingly flashy and "in your face". OSX was more bland but aqua was still kitch and unneedingly strippy. iOS6 app's ultra textured or "realistic" interfaces were the peak of that trend IMO.
In the real world, not everyone likes kids playroom colors, nor grandma's 60s style wallpaper, nor steam punky design, nor green-blue metalic robot parts. Personally I like MUJI style clean and clear design, and I feel like it took that much time to have a core of people to value cleanness and simplicity in computer UI design as well.
Oh, I definitely agree, XP's playskool-esque design was way over the top, and OS X's excessive animations/reflections/etc. are obnoxious. It does seem to be getting better in that regard. I like most of Bootstrap's choices, and those seem to be diffusing out.
Meh... I'm actually a fan of XP's design, although I can't tell how much of that is actual aesthetic appreciation and how much just nostalgia. Colors are nice, yet the interface as a whole was actually less flashy than its successors, as the last pre-GPU-compositing Windows, making for a solid whole. But I also liked Aero's glossiness, which I'm happy to see somewhat reflected in Yosemite - nor did I ever have an issue with OS X, although iOS 6 was a bit much for my taste. (On the other hand, I also like iOS 7. The only design I seriously don't like is Google's, for reasons I'll elaborate on the off-chance anyone cares.)
From windows XP to 7, the windows default themes and colors where disturbingly flashy and "in your face". OSX was more bland but aqua was still kitch and unneedingly strippy. iOS6 app's ultra textured or "realistic" interfaces were the peak of that trend IMO.
In the real world, not everyone likes kids playroom colors, nor grandma's 60s style wallpaper, nor steam punky design, nor green-blue metalic robot parts. Personally I like MUJI style clean and clear design, and I feel like it took that much time to have a core of people to value cleanness and simplicity in computer UI design as well.