Design matters even when it's not art. There's a great little documentary called "Objectified". It's worth watching if you want to see a rebuttal for your opinion.
You misread my point about tools. Design has value. Originality doesn't. Nobody is complaining that HP's new product has bad design; in fact, they seem to be complaining that it follows Apple's good design.
He said originality doesn't matter, not that design doesn't matter. Design is very important, in fact it's probably so important that when faced between the choice of good design and original design it's probably best to err towards good design.
