From Mark Wilson’s interview with Mark Kawano, former Apple designer, has this nugget:
You see companies that have poached Apple designers, and they come up with sexy interfaces or something interesting, but it doesn’t necessarily move the needle for their business or their product. That’s because all the designer did was work on an interface piece, but to have a really well-designed product in the way Steve would say, this ‘holistic’ thing, is everything. It’s not just the interface piece. It’s designing the right business model into it. Designing the right marketing and the copy, and the way to distribute it. All of those pieces are critical.
It’s all too often overlooked that design is more than just the way something looks. Designing a good product is to design a product that is well thought out and consistent through all parts of the product. The business model, the name, the looks, the colors, the target market, etc — every piece matters.