I got the feeling there are better textures out there, there's just something not working as intended. Maybe the lowres textures are a bug, known issue still being worked on or something just some players are experiencing.
Someone mentioned setting it to low, exiting, then setting it to high and restarting would fix it. I also had a problem with other preferences settings not being saved after restart (cover quickbar).
I do have the lowres issue and sometimes textures even don't load at all (had a pitchblack Satele earlier). So I'm sure there's just something wrong there and let's hope it will be fixed soonish – either way an official statement concerning this (including AA, AF, etc) would be nice.
So before people are get all heated up: it might be that the other person isn't seeing the game as you are, so consider this being the reason he has a different opinion about the visual quality of the game.