Well color changes might be an example of them trying to be cool. And maybe young folk think that Apple phones are cool partly because the expense is still a lot for folks who don't have regular jobs. But the folks that I deal with who are adults just all have Apple products. They do not see them as cool. They seem them as normal these days.
Pretty looking though is not something that I think is useless. The Mac Pro looking nice and also being very powerful did not seem like a sacrifice or a mistake by Apple. It seemed like trying really hard to me.
I don't think adding retina is as easy to do for laptop as you say considering I have a 2015 laptop that cost a bundle and is not even close to a retina screen on it. And I do not see too many out there that have what you say is so easy to add to the Mac Air.
I think folks who feel like Apples marketing team is the real key is missing the point. Even in your earlier post you say that their hardware is really high quality. Samsungs commercials have been funny and have had great celebrity endorsements. And they've spent a bundle. I do not see how Apple has some stranglehold on marketing. All the marketing is done by third parties that basically any company can hire for an add campaign anyway.
I think Apple has a mammoth RD department funded by iPhone profits and they are reaping the benefits of scale since their entire company focuses on high end products while the other companies distract themselves by focusing on products that compete on price. Their competitors make lots of worse level products in every line be it phone or computer than Apple. While Apple does not spend time designing anything that is not in the near state of the art. They may continue to sell stuff that is not state of the art. But that is just manufacturing continue to make it. Apple is not spending time working on the 5S in 2015, though it continues to sell. While Samsung releases products in 2015 that they could have made int 2013. That is the distraction that Apple does not have.
Wait a minute, we're not talking theory here.
Apple
chose to focus R&D on creating a new (and in my opinion unnecessary) machine instead of bringing the Air up to where it should be. But a lot of that focus was aesthetics-based: terribly thin and funky keyboard to make it fit, but colored to match the iPhone (matching accessories are "cool"). So, "pretty-looking" took a back seat to "better" (ie, a retina Air).
I'm not trying to diminish Apple's technical brilliance. They still make really, really great products. And I also appreciate their attention to aesthetics (this brought me to them in the first place).
But I feel you underestimate the power of their marketing team, and Apple's focus shift to "fashion" over function.
This has always been there to some extent, but they took it to 11 on the RMB, and the Mac Pro.
In that case, Apple KILLED a use case and category of machine and didn't replace it with another.
The current Mac Pro is not the equivalent of the old. But it is preeetty. It is also powerful, for what it is: A video pro machine.
In that case, it appears that making it look awesome (it does), and small (it is) took a back seat to what you can do with it. All the PCI cards and drives you had are useless. The "external" nature of it means if you were a Mac Pro user you now have to "rebuild" your entire infrastructure back up.
Buuut...it's small and the ports light up in the back and look how "cool" it looks both inside and outside!! Watch the keynote again and you'll see what I mean. It's an amazing achievement....that I didn't need. What I needed was a Mac Pro with the latest processors, TB and USB 3. Maybe a smaller case. That's it. EVERYBODY would have been happy with that and it would have sold like crazy. Hell, Apple could have sold the 2 side by side and treated the new Mac Pro like the cube.
Alas, the "prettier" machine won.
Here's to hoping that the "fashion" sense doesn't extend to the MacBook Pro line any more than it already has and they don't pull a Mac Pro on us. I already can't buy one anyway until they offer a 2TB+ SSD or aftermarket ones show up (my use case is admittedly narrow).
I would
hate an MBP with one f'in port and the RMB's keyboard (regardless of it's technical marvel), even if it came in Gooooold.