Since the primary reason for any corporation to exist is to make money for its shareholders... it seems quite obvious what ever Apple is doing is working. It must be a very good idea for them to spend over a billion dollars every year on marketing.
Now don’t get me wrong I love gizmos as much or more than almost anyone else you can think of. But to me it seems quite incredible that the most profitable company in the history of the world is making all of this money churning out gizmos that lets face it most people use more for wiling away countless hours rather than doing something productive. I am as guilty as anyone here for that. I would speculate that only a wide spread addiction to unproductive behaviors could cause so many people to part with so much money.
With that in mind... Apple may also be doing more for world peace than any country in the history of the world also. Even terrorists are probably sitting around wasting time on their apple devices rather than engaging in productive terrorist activities. I mean seriously, most terrorists would probably rather sit around tapping on the screens of their iPhones these days than actually blowing themselves up.
The thing that they are doing right, is the very same culture that brought Apple from where it was with that Apple commercial at the Super Bowl, and that culture being extended by Steve Jobs, when he came back in the 90s.
After Jobs left (kicked out by Sculley) and until he came back, Apple reverted to the standard “business model” of other companies, put in place by those “from other companies” and it just did not work. Steve Jobs put Apple BACK ON TRACK for what it was before, when he returned!