Marketing like this is supposed to form a link between the context (Brooklyn hipster lifestyle) and the product. So next time you hear about Inbox you'll think of the lifestyle and subconsciously go "maybe if I have inbox my life will be more like those cool happy good looking rich Brooklyn hipsters on the ad". Their target market with this ad is people that want to be like or have this (or a subset of this).

Apple is a more inherently hipster company that (I'm guessing here) has a large hipster marketshare. It's known for being hipster, so the link is already there. No need for ads like this to form that link to try and capture the twenty something crowd that wants this lifestyle.

Hacker news is full of people that value function, results and optimised workflow, which are essentially all that matters with an email app. So this form of marketing is lost on them :)