I have to agree that Flash is absolutely great for animations and explaining how things work.
Spinning buttons, however, are just kind of irritating. (Although I have certainly seen more irritating uses of Flash). I would prefer to see them just highlight or change color or something, but the spinning, to me, is distracting.
I was looking at a site today that was totally Flashed. Everytime I clicked on something, it said "Loading...". Maybe that was the product for me, but I'll never know - I had to bail.