Apple does not have good marketing at all. Their pitch is considerably less polished than most other major corporations, and they often do a poor job converting them to different languages. This is very much beginning to show in the languish of the mac vs pc ads.
I don't believe for one second that people who swoon for Apple's reality-distorting effects, were under the influence of their ads. 100% of it came from the products themselves, and if product design can do that, I believe that's saying something, because most of the product design world fail to do that. Sony used to be able to do this, but now
Sony only has themselves to blame for not pioneering this market (they had the HDD portable idea as early as '99), losing this market because they wanted to chase their price premiums and nonexistent usage models, and being so egotistical about their products that they're often less than honest about it. And Sony likes to harp on about the "pride of ownership" -- WTH is that? A few strands of what they call the actual fiber of the carbon fiber, that frankly looks like they're photoshopped?
I have given Sony a lot of business over the last 10 years, and I can say with a lot of first hand experience that Sony's track record in that time period have consistently been less than decent, whether it's quality control, degree of innovation, or honesty. This is not the innovative and trusty Sony my parents knew in their times.
As for sound - if you can't distinguish Sony's "feel-good" factor from its actual sound quality, you probably don't know your sound quality very well. Sony has a very obvious hierarchy in every single one of their product lines, and while they may sound similarly entertaining, their actual noise floor, actual ability to drive difficult phones, and actual clarity pretty much correspond to their price, and their place in the product line.
