I agree that Apple's stuff looks classy, has a nice aesthetic, and has a lot of design work that goes into it, but it's also important to see some of the marketing hype for what it is. It's not hand-crafted by gnomes steeped in the crafts of wafer etching, working from little cabins high in the Tirolean Alps.
Yes, Apple products are not hand-crafted by gnomes, but they do represent a set of priorities that are rare in the world of manufacturing. I think it is more than a marketing gimmick; there is truly a desire to produce a quality product rather than only maximizing profit. I'm sure there were many times where Jobs vetoed a design decision where a little money could be saved at the expense of quality. I hope that the future leadership of Apple continues to have that courage.
How is that not just a made up caricature? What single example of Apple's marketing can you show that suggests anything of the sort?
The only marketing materials I've seen from Apple that say anything about how the products are made show Jony Ive in a workshop talking about industrial machine processes.
