Companies pay groups to run marketing campaigns that push the idea that their product is missing from your life. Exact methods vary but it's often in the form of video and printed advertising. Sometimes you'll see celebrity endorsements or conspicuous product placement in TV/movies. Whatever the people-nerds think will convince the general public to buy.

Marketing.

Go back to the Apple/PC ads in the 90's,where the Apple guy was hip, and the PC guy was an old fuddy-duddy in a brown suit.

Apple has always traded on the slickness of their products. They often claim to be the "first" at something, when they really just developed the first seriously marketable version.

iPhone wasn't the first smartphone by years. Just the first one that was slick enough for consumers to bite on, when a year before it was geeky to have such a device.

Simulated intellect. The same way that big, fake boobs sell products to a particular demographic, so do fake, big brains appeal to another.