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").