Really? Give me the data to back up your bottom line claim. Because in my (5 and counting) start-ups I've seen little to no impact on the bottom line from design blog posts.
I believe products that are designed well and polished get more attention from blogs and receive more word of mouth recommendations. I believe one of reasons iOS and the iPhone helped propel Apple into becoming the largest company in the world was Apple's attention to design details. However, I have no way to test or prove this theory. So please disagree if you like.
2 - Normal blogs and tech blogs don't write articles that go into detail on the minutae of the design elements in a product's UI. That's limited to design blogs.
3 - Personally, I'm getting kind of tired of the default defense of most designers to this sort of criticism ("because Apple"). Saying that Apple is where it is because of Design not only ignores the market, product and business realities that have lead to Apple's (recent) success - it also ignores the many ways in which Apple's design is sub-standard or even bad (resulting in people copying bad design patterns "because Apple did it").
Internally, I think it's also a way to have the designers/developers proud of something they helped accomplish. No, I didn't perform any of the design on the SeatGeek app, but you'll bet your ass I'm not complaining about the three hours I spent uploading about 100 - outsourced and therefore not named well enough for me to automate it - logos to S3 for use in the app. It's a source of pride, and it's what staves off the burnout.
Reference: I work on Operations at SeatGeek, and after slicing up a PSD to very exacting specifications two years ago, I know exactly what kind of a difference design can make re: tech blogs/traffic.