The irony did not lost on me that an article about superfluous visual elements is overlayed by an unnecessary distraction. But maybe the point is to not be 100% utilitarian but to weave in a "warm" feeling of the season. It did give me that a fuzzy feeling for the first few second. Then I was bored; then annoyed. Which pretty much follow my feeling of using Tahoe: Cool -> Meh -> Uggg!