Apple probably has swathes of real-world usability data showing that virtually no-one uses their phone for prolonged periods of time while it's laying down on a hard flat surface.
You may be right about the aesthetics (and Lord Jobs may well have agreed with you) but they may have made the tradeoff consciously.
One can say "they probably had data to support it" about virtually any decision. It is not really a defense from critique. It may have been deliberate, but it still feels wrong and bad.
You may be right about the aesthetics (and Lord Jobs may well have agreed with you) but they may have made the tradeoff consciously.