> because they nail the experience and the category becomes much more popular. Moreover, Apple generally dominates the categories they enter when it comes to pr

> because they nail the experience and the category becomes much more popular. Moreover, Apple generally dominates the categories they enter when it comes to profit margins. (And no, it is not only because people pay to carry an Apple logo.) At some point it switched from people buying Apple as a premium brand to, as you said them just being "more popular" and leveraging that. A lot of people simply don't look much farther than they brands they already own, and this applies to Apple as well. I wouldn't say that the AirPods were a "setting the bar" product. I'd argue that for the Apple ecosystem it was more of a "keeping the bar", with AirPods being the path of least resistance after they removed the headphone jack.