Design is what matters you just have to change your perspective on what design is all about.
I understand what design is - I'm not trying to claim it's just aesthetics.
My claim is merely that this part: "he applies design thinking to his company" is less important than this part: "Apple have almost complete vertical integration both on the hardware and the software side" - it's exactly this integration makes QA's job easier, I would guess by several orders of magnitude.
The very fact that he uses design thinking means that he will try to do everything he can to control the process. Vertical integration is a byproduct of this thinking not the other way around. It's not just something they accidentally happened to have.
Why do you think they have introduced a processor that they are involved so heavily in?
None the less this post is not about Apple but about Microsoft. So let's just stop here :)
I understand what design is - I'm not trying to claim it's just aesthetics.
My claim is merely that this part: "he applies design thinking to his company" is less important than this part: "Apple have almost complete vertical integration both on the hardware and the software side" - it's exactly this integration makes QA's job easier, I would guess by several orders of magnitude.