It's called not cutting corners and doing things right.
You haven't seen Quicktime's H.264 encoder...
Personally I think they have just managed to convince people that if something looks and feels good nothing else matters. That and playing with the media and building up hype machines.
As the grandparent alluded to, Apple's H.264 encoder is the very worst one around. There are MPEG2 encoders that are competitive bitrate-wise!
Not everything Apple releases is gold. The AppStore is a perfect example -- a pile of total shit in every way, that only Apple could get away with because they are so ridiculously competent at everything else that touches it.
If Apple is all about hype, when have most of the developers I know switched to using Macs for their laptops, running OS X? Because they believe the hype or because the user experience, even for a developer, is better than the alternatives?
A big part of the hype machine is producing a product that people are satisfied with and will recommend to others. Word of mouth is better than any amount of TV advertising. For example, as an easy way to avoid being free tech support to my friends and family my default response for the last few years is "I dunno... I use a Mac. Maybe call tech support?" and suddenly most of my friends and family have Macs.
You haven't seen Quicktime's H.264 encoder...
Personally I think they have just managed to convince people that if something looks and feels good nothing else matters. That and playing with the media and building up hype machines.