Touching the back wall of the Apple store

> We were fascinated with the Apple store in the mall because it was essentially an interactive luxury goods store where they'd let you actually grasp all the luxury goods with your teenager hands.

The secret being, of course, that they're not actually luxury goods. Like many things at the mall, it's a high-margin doodad sold to people in the proverbial impulse aisle of life. Dippin' Dots, knock-off watches, Build-A-Bear workshop - all in same vein of "looks expensive but is cheap to make" no different from the iPod.

I think the American shopping mall is one of the things that helped me contextualize Apple's brand identity. Apple does good marking in isolation or on a screen, SF Pro looks very stunning and the Apple logo is chic and simple. But so is the Cartier logo. And the Rolex storefront. Or any of the other genuinely valuable things sold at malls. It's the marketing that people respond to, not the value of a good.

I largely agree with you, but I think one of Apple’s secret sauces (and they aren’t the only one) is that while their products are to some marketed as luxury items, they are in fact coupled with extremely high utility which is a somewhat new concept, in my view.

The iPhone or your equivalent Android device truly is one of the most useful inventions humanity has ever created, especially for the era that we currently exist in.

> while their products are to some marketed as luxury items, they are in fact coupled with extremely high utility which is a somewhat new concept, in my view.

Well, a Rolex has extremely high utility too. It's just that it has much less utility than a digital watch you can buy for $23 from Casio. The purpose of spending the other $59,477 [ https://www.rolex.com/en-us/watches/sky-dweller/m336935-0008 ] is just that you can say you did.

Apple products are similar. They have high utility that is nevertheless not as high as competing products that are much cheaper. All of the value is coming from the luxury branding.