You're not. And "make all the apps look the same except for some color" is a misinterpretation, but it's how a lot of the early practitioners seem to be interpreting it.
The idea, as I understand it, is material is a base metaphor that's basically flat goo paper. It can be arranged, layered, and has some intrinsic animation behavior.
But the designer should think of material in the same way print designers think of text columns, or pullquotes, or the page. These are all things someone invented. They're useful, but they're not compelling. You still need to do something else on top of it.
The biggest problem I see with the flat goo paper is it's being treated like its intrinsically playful. But that's not appropriate for all UI's. Some apps should be stark and clean. Some should be dark. To me, if you're going to create a base UI language, it needs to be flexible enough to adapt to less playful brands. The next question is whether that's a problem with "material design" or just a matter of nobody has made a stark app with material as a metaphor yet. And if that's not possible then it's just a passing fad.
(Can you define "goo paper"? I searched for that term and did not find anything useful: almost all of the hits were "false positives", with "goo" and "paper" as part of different phrases separated by punctuation. I ask, because you seem to have a really short intuitive summary of the design concept, and I'd like to understand it, but you seem to be using a term that no one else has ever used.)
The idea, as I understand it, is material is a base metaphor that's basically flat goo paper. It can be arranged, layered, and has some intrinsic animation behavior.
But the designer should think of material in the same way print designers think of text columns, or pullquotes, or the page. These are all things someone invented. They're useful, but they're not compelling. You still need to do something else on top of it.
The biggest problem I see with the flat goo paper is it's being treated like its intrinsically playful. But that's not appropriate for all UI's. Some apps should be stark and clean. Some should be dark. To me, if you're going to create a base UI language, it needs to be flexible enough to adapt to less playful brands. The next question is whether that's a problem with "material design" or just a matter of nobody has made a stark app with material as a metaphor yet. And if that's not possible then it's just a passing fad.