[no_more_death]

I've noticed that most large companies go for a sterile look. Google, Microsoft, etc. I've always thought of Apple design as sterile as well.

Getting off track, Apple design is simply not a monolithic, "zen" one-stroke entity. Apple design amalgamates understated hardware with loud, lickable user interfaces. To see my point, consider that Apple hardware is definitely NOT lickable, whereas software generally is. Historically this may be due to the dissonance between Forstall (software design) and Ive (engineering design).

(Feel free to shred me as I don't really know anything about Apple design.)

[gnaffle]

The interesting thing is that the new Apple hardware starting with the iMac certainly started out as lickable, and very similar to the original OSX software (with pinstripes and all). Both the software (OSX) and hardware has gradually become more and more clean and "sterile" with time. The exceptions have mainly been certain applications and a few UI widgets / icons.