>The kernel of truth is that the technology itself isn’t valuable; it’s the /humanization/ of a technology, how it interfaces with the people who use it every day.
Apple even takes it even one step further: they understood (Just like haute couture, cosmetics and luxury watch brands before them) that it's neither the product nor the technology nor even the interface itself that's what's really valuable (in the sense of: monetizeable), but the user EXPERIENCE in the sense of how it makes the user FEEL. Which is Why Apple excels in brand marketing.
If you want a cash cow, you don't want a technology-focused project or a mere company, but something between a luxury lifestyle brand and a cult.
in retrosprect - re-reading my last comment again, too late for editing - I just noticed that there is a small detail error in it, owed to my technology/development-oriented bias that is too detached from the brand marketing and sales/monetization oriented mindset of Apple:
Instead of "user", the more fitting word would have been "customer", though even that would only have been a rough one-word approximation for the concept that could in the Apple brand marketing context better be described as "person (to be) suggestively conditioned to be a follower/fan who is content with being kept in a walled garden and milked as much as possible in order to be part of the circle and to continually FEEL the EXPERIENCE".
So yes, "EXPERIENCE" is key, but "user experience" in the sense that "user" has in development/tech or even specifically in UX is only a smaller part of that.
This used to be common to all home computer platforms, with exception of the PC.
We used to buy the whole vertical experience, from hardware, OS integration and peripherals.
The clone market, which IBM failed to prevent, kind of broke this down.
Yet it is no surprise that OEMs nowadays try to bring this model back, not only because of Apple, also because it is the only means to differentiate themselves, while recovering the margins that have been lost all these years.
If you want a cash cow, you don't want a technology-focused project or a mere company, but something between a luxury lifestyle brand and a cult.