I think Sun made mice that didn't work without their metallic mouse pad, that had some sort of grid on it.

Apple's problem is in following:

There are industrial designers, fashion designers, managers and engineers.

Apple doesn't have industrial designers. Only fashion designers pretending.

In a normal company managers consult designers and engineers back and forth, both figuring out some compromise and also asking the other group whether there is a better way.

Not in Apple. Their designers are clearly superior hierarchically to engineers.

And in the end their products are of inferior quality (for that price).

Apple's idea of how things should look and work, when expressed in words, is absolutely fine! It's actually wonderful. And perfectly possible, it's actually the same goal as with industrial ergonomics.

Except they don't have the process they need to fulfill that. They only have the PR to pretend.