If you look at the old issues of Byte, you can immediately see the difference. Most of the ads are generic spec/price lists with maybe some crappy hand-drawn graphics. A few are photos and professionally drawn images with some attempts at metaphor, but they invariably look crude, heavy-handed, jokey, or cartoony.
The primary focus in the early Apple ads is the Apple user at home, with his partner. It's the first thing you see before you get drawn into the copy. It's an attempt to sell soft values, not just hardware specs.
This ownership of soft values is a huge difference that most of the industry still fails to get, and which Apple itself seems to be forgetting.
Apple is the only company ever to create technology products that appeal equally to men and women without relying on any traditional gender branding. (At least that used to be true until "rose gold" appeared.)
MS is sort of catching up now, two decades later. But it's not a natural cultural fit for them, so I'm not expecting a stream of great things.
Google is - well, the brand mascot is an android. That's all anyone needs to know.
Jean-Louis Gassée (head of Mac development and later global head of marketing, '85 - '90) seems to be have been the intellectual force behind this in Apple.
I'm not going to pretend that Apple did not significantly influence the direction of product design. It absolutely did.
However, you're making it sound like Apple invented product marketing. They didn't. Microsoft and Google are new to the marketing game because they're entering the consumer hardware business, which is a new venture. When you're the defacto software solution (Windows, Google Search), you don't need marketing. You don't need to build a brand. Your brand is so ingrained in culture that everyone, everywhere uses it.
It's a lot better of a spot to be than trying to reach that goal. Google and Microsoft are now going to try to leverage their software platforms to launch hardware in the same way, but it needs marketing.