Customers do react to "Oooh shiny!" -- it's a permanent part of our psychology. Ask your average consumer what was new in Vista? Aero. What's Aero? Neat visual

Customers do react to "Oooh shiny!" -- it's a permanent part of our psychology. Ask your average consumer what was new in Vista? Aero. What's Aero? Neat visual effects. What was new in Office 2007? Ribbon. What's Ribbon? It's that new bar at the top of the screen. Consumers remember the visual changes in these products best. Like it or not, those superfluous window animations in Mac OS were exactly what screamed "creative" and "cool" to a lot of customers, over the then "business-like" Windows XP. Video games invest in graphics so they can have impressive screenshots. Office suites tweak their UI so that they can communicate "new and improved" visually. Of course there are other benefits than looks. But the looks, the screenshots are your product's first impression -- if it looks the same as the last version, people just might not buy.