Why do Blackberries have both the Blackberry logo and the carrier’s logo stamped on the front? They must think: “It’s good for people to see our logo, so it must be super awesome for them to mentally trip over it every time they want to check email.”
A rancher doesn’t burn a brand into a steer’s skin dozens of times, and he doesn’t brand the steer’s face. The rancher’s brand derives value not from being in your face, but from the generations of breeding and care that make the steer what it is.
A logo is a shortcut, a symbol that represents value, it’s not the value itself.
Apple could have put an Apple logo in the iPhone’s round home button. Any other cellphone maker would have, but Apple has taste and class.
Apple knows that keeping superfluous logos off a device’s face both looks better and saves millions of users a bit of cognitive overhead dozens of times a day. Apple also knows that real branding doesn’t happen when you tack on a logo, it happens when people love your product so much they can’t live without it.