Cultivating an enthusiast base is very much a viable strategy toward marketing a product if you also play the rest of the game correctly. Apple products are viewed as luxury goods because of their appearance and interface, but they also had a 'cool' factor to them as a consequence of being favored by creative professionals circa 2005-2010 when the iPod and then iPhone were coming into their own. People like easy-to-use, but being one of the 'in' crowd also has a huge influence on how people adopt technology.
Outside of enthusiast circles companies are about psychology more than anything. Make the customer feel empowered, even if they aren't, and they'll buy your thing over the technically better option.