No, it's not about eye candy at all.

It's about easily scrolling with your fingers. Scroll bars are often difficult to drag with fingers. And often you want to keep scrolling with one motion. It's supposed to be intuitive. When you flick something in real life, you expect physics to kick in. Why not on a screen too?

But if you're really hard conditioned by scroll bars and mice, then it won't seem quite as intuitive at first.