This is a fundamental misunderstanding. The minimalist aesthetic is underpinned by the principle that form follows function, and is absolutely opposed to ornament or visual additions. Aesthetic === functional in this worldview; it's not a separate thing which gets added in. (This is precisely why Ives and others eschewed skeumorphism.)
Take the iPod shuffle:
- Gen 1 was minimal, usable, and a portable USB drive,
- Gen 2 was minimal and usable, but lost its portable USB drive functionality (required a cable to also be carried around), but
- Gen 3 was smaller for no reason, moved the controls to an earbud cable which was impossible to use while running, and cost extra to buy an adapter if you didn't want to use their shitty earbuds, and then
- Gen 4 returned to the 2nd Gen design, because Gen 3 was very clearly flawed.
Seriously, explain the 3rd Gen iPod Shuffle.
I can cite many examples where they've dumped functionality for aesthetics, like non-removable batteries, fully-sealed computers (latest Mac mini), etc, but this is the clearest mistake they've made where they had to actually reverse course because of their favoritism for aesthetics over functionality.
More generally, Apple have taken what many might think of as an industrial design approach and applied it to consumer design in a more rigorous way than others. So a lot of thought about coatings and materials used for screens and bodies, packaging (part of the consumer experience), and so on.
To construct a plausible scenario around your point off the top of my head, reduced size is clearly a key functional feature of a portable device, and while I'm not defending 3rd gen shuffle, it would make sense that a device you might go running with would be better if absolutely tiny. And if you are on the run, there would be an argument for having controls on the cable rather than the device. I think these kinds of things are clearly getting a lot of attention as we see the designs are being iterated and previous mistakes corrected.
Likewise, things like sealed devices are absolutely functional design decisions from the point of view of creating a mass-produced device. The success of the ipad bears this out. It may appal me that apple will only completely swap an ipad with cracked screen, or that I can't upgrade RAM in my macbook - but I can understand that standardisation and non-customisation is key to things like a predictable user experience, manufacturing and supply chain, worldwide warranties. Apple have always been about this and it's why they manufacture both hardware and software. I won't buy the 12" macbook computing device myself, but for family members it might be the ideal laptop. Anything else and I know I'm going to get several more messages a week asking me why facebook and twitter aren't working.