Yes much of gold’s value comes from the way it looks. Not disputing that.

I suppose you could tie some sort of value to technical application, but it isn’t intrinsic to gold itself

It is

Gold has properties that are unique. You can’t just use iron as a replacement. Apple can’t be like, “You know gold is expensive, I think we will just use cheap iron in our phones instead”. Not going to work out. There is a demand for gold over it just looking pretty.

This technical application is what gives gold it’s intrinsic value

Even if that value is really low it’s always going to be something

Well not always because, like you said, if society collapsed, Apple wouldn’t need to make phones. But at that point, all economic stuff is out the window. It would have to go through a bartering system until some kind of currency system could get started again. Eventually gold will be needed again. So really it still has value just not at the time.