You don't get to Apple is (large market cap, high customer satisfaction scores, high reviews in the tech press, etc.) because of marketing. If it were that easy, companies would just copy their marketing or load up on marketing and they would be successful.
And a huge part of Apple's current success is based on the tech and expertise they got from NeXT. That work underpins not just laptops and desktops but phones, tablets, set-top boxes, and more.
Perhaps you only get to where Apple is with world-class marketing.
Apple's iPod wasn't the first mp3 player, and it for damn sure wasn't technically superior.
The iPhone was not the first smartphone, nor the first phone with a touchscreen, nor the first phone with a web browser, nor the first phone with an App Store. It arguably had a better UX than incumbents, but better UX doesn't win markets just by dint of existing.
The iMac was a cute computer that couldn't run prevalent Windows software and didn't have a floppy drive.
Recent MacBook Pros have an awful keyboard, not just aesthetically but with known hardware problems. I understand at long last they're reverting to an older, better design.
Tech and expertise don't win just because they exist.
I'm as reflexively inclined as many technical people to be dismissive of marketing, but I dont think you're right here. You can't "just copy" marketing in the way you can't "just copy" anything else that a company is world-class in, and good marketing can indeed build market dominance (do you think coca cola is really a vastly superior technical innovation over Pepsi?)
The fact that it isn't a net good for users in most cases doesn't mean that it's trivial to do.
And a huge part of Apple's current success is based on the tech and expertise they got from NeXT. That work underpins not just laptops and desktops but phones, tablets, set-top boxes, and more.