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Different applications require different approaches to GUI design. Still, there are always trends and we have seen huge changes over the last decade. Remember Windows 95 applications?
Balancing eye-candy and functionality is difficult.
I would appreciate it if you good folks would tell me of some recent applications with GUI's that have impressed you the most.
Thank you all.
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My personal preference is towards speed and functionality. However I am seeing a lot of tablets with the "eye-candy". I suspect that the majority of users prefer this type of GUI. My thoughts on the matter are to build something that works perfectly, first, and then add as much of the other stuff as needed to make someone want to use it.
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Does any particular application come to mind?
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An example of a functional program is Abbyy Finereader 9.0 (I haven't seen the more current versions). It does what it is supposed to and is intuitive enough that you don't have to wade through the manual which was a waste of time. The eye candy that I think is a waste of time is any of these apps where you "slide" things all over with finger gestures. I am sure I am outvoted on that one based on the number of people sliding things across their tablets 
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The folk in my shop always laugh at how most users love and are most impressed with "shiny objects". But then, so do we; we just like a different kind of shine.
I'm intrigued by your dismissal of the "sliding things around" paradigm, after saying you are most impressed by intuitive interfaces. On a mouseless device like a mobile phone or tablet, what could be more natural and intuitive than moving things around that way? Is it not just the mouseless version of dragging an object around your desktop screen with your mouse; a skeuomorphic action that simulates real life. Why do you think that's eye candy and a waste of time?
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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Well to start with I haven't done much of the "sliding around" tablet work. I went through three 7" tablets before that was in fashion and stopped using them because they were too small to see (I get annoyed at having to pull out the glasses to read something because my arm isn't long enough to hold it where I can see it  )But what I've seen has mostly been done already in simpler formats.
I haven't done any testing but I can't imagine that those graphics are generated without slowing the response time of the program/apps they are running. And that is the only reason I consider them eye-candy. I absolutely agree that the gestures are intuitive!
Not only that, I have not yet talked myself out of getting the new Surface coming out next month and if I don't park it in a drawer because I can't see it, I may learn to like those features but if I don't, I'll look for somewhere in the control panel (if it has one!) to tone them down.
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Thanks, you may have just saved me from wasting money on the 7" tablet I've been eyeing, as my reading glasses are never where I need them. 
Surely, with two or four cores found on most (every?) tablet out there, that response time is negligible to non-existant, and probably handled by the GPU anyway, only interfering with other graphical events.
I have an HTC Trophy, a light-weight phone with a single core and 512M of memory that runs WinPhone7 and Metro. That's not quite the same as a tablet, but there is never any lag on anything graphical, and for me the finger gestures to navigate the device and move objects around are a lot more intuitive than tapping a series of icons, like on the iPhone and Android. I'm eyeing the Surface, too, but my inner penny-pincher can't get over the sticker shock enough to let me pull out my wallet.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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One nice thing to say for the 7" tablets is they will fit in a jacket pocket  but before I completely talk you out of it I was trying to read PDF's on them. One of them had some internal magic that could adjust the font size but put pictures in the wrong place. This made it very hard to read code books when the figure being referred to was 5 pages later after I had given up on it. I have had a few VERY slow computers which made me sour on anything to do with slow processes but if it truly is a negligible amount then it doesn't bother me at all. And finally, the sticker shock on the surface is why I said "have not yet talked myself out of it". It looks like the answer to small screen/reading glasses, a full OS and can run the programs I use, etc. Maybe I can talk a friend into getting one first! 
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Not sure about examples, but for me a good application has following features:
- speed an reliability: It shouldn't take long and it should be correct.
If it is not correct, it will say so in a user friendly manner.
- What the user sees is what the user needs: This is very important, don't show buttons or controls that are for the manager if the receptionist is using the manager and vice versa.
- Only show what is immediately necessary: all the rest you can hide in menu's or somewhere else.
- Only enable what the user is allowed to use
- Keep it standard: eg. in microsoft products, the ok and cancel buttons are always on the bottom - right, save buttons top left, etc...
- If you use buttons with icons, stay consistant and clear.
- It should look slick and nice and fluffy and beautiful (including when resizing!), but don't overdo it. It's like a powerpoint presentation, animations are nice, but if you use the wrong ones and too much, the presentation starts to look unprofessional.
one can whip up a nice looking UI in a matter of minutes, but a professional UI takes a lot more time! 20/80 rule. You need 20% of the time to make 80% of the UI and 80% of the time to take the final 20% to the finish.
hope this helps.
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Battleshit grey I tell should be the basis of your GUI design, no more than a few colours and stick to battleshit grey. I bring you this advice as a UI designer of more than 20 years designing battleshit grey screens. If you, like me, have absolutely no design skills and no colour matching talent and very limited imagination use BS grey.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Thank you for the advice and for making me smile.
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Windows 3. Grey. Nice pointy corners. Menues.
Avoid animations -- you don't know what else is running on the system, be a good neighbor, don't waste cycles.
Don't steal focus.
Minimize noises.
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As Microsoft OSs go, Windows 7.
One of the things GUI designers haven't seemed to learn yet, is when to stop. They seem to uniformly take the attitude that if some changes were good, more are better.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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I think www.skycms.net system has an interesting UI (you have to register to see it though)
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Windows 8 Modern UI.
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