I've worked in physical product development at some companies that include names you'd recognize.

More often than not, those annoying features are direct requests from the person up top who smacks people. They want that feature because they think it will sell, and it's no use trying to argue with them because you'll just get smacked again.

Yeah I think that was one of the unusual things about Jobs; he really cared about product design for its own sake and not just for profit.

I think that is pretty unusual in large companies.