People have been complaining about skeumorphism and generally outdated looks in the GUI department for iOS 6 for ages, where have you been?
The author's comments aren't "silly", they're just an example of an expert talking about his field. Novice programmers don't feel "grimy" when they look at code that should clearly be refactored, but that doesn't mean that programmers who talk about ugly code are "silly" either. If you haven't studied design to a certain extent you probably won't ever be aware of tension in an interface unless it's extremely evident. That does not mean it's not there.
The author's comments aren't "silly", they're just an example of an expert talking about his field. Novice programmers don't feel "grimy" when they look at code that should clearly be refactored, but that doesn't mean that programmers who talk about ugly code are "silly" either. If you haven't studied design to a certain extent you probably won't ever be aware of tension in an interface unless it's extremely evident. That does not mean it's not there.