GigaOM: Top Designer Dieter Rams on What Makes Apple Special

Short, but great, read:

Apple has managed to achieve what I never achieved: using the power of their products to persuade people to queue to buy them. For me, I had to queue to receive food at the end of World War II. That's quite a change.

They understand that design is not simply an adjective to place in front of a product's name to somehow artificially enhance its value. Ever fewer people appear to understand that design is a serious profession; and for our future welfare we need more companies to take that profession seriously.

Another post here covers this (experience before features). Distinctive product design makes people invisible to the commodity of features. No one asks how many megapixels the iPhone camera has, but they do ask that of  Android  phones. That’s a design #fail.