Getting confused about causation and correlation

Have you noticed that in most cities, every time there are lots of umbrellas, it's raining?

From this analysis, the obvious way to make it rain is to be sure that everyone has an umbrella, preferably a black one, since that seems to be the kind that's most visible during big storms.

The trappings of successful marketing (or successful anything for that matter) aren't always the causes. Sometimes they are the caused. Just because Apple did something doesn't mean that it was responsible for Apple's success. It may be that they were successful despite some of the things they did, not because of them.