It's not that Apple is subjective. Design isn't and shouldn't be objective. I see it like this: design-thinking tends to be top-down and borrows from fields l

It's not that Apple is subjective. Design isn't and shouldn't be objective. I see it like this: design-thinking tends to be top-down and borrows from fields like psychology and anthropology, while data-driven-thinking borrows from the harder empirical sciences and is based on continuous measurement. Neither is "correct" and both can be executed to produce a great company. Apple, as you say, is on one end of the spectrum. Companies like Amazon and Google are on the other end. It's important to understand how you're making decisions and why you've chosen that process as opposed to some other one. It sounds like neither Google nor Doug have done that.