I'm not sure this is true: Samsung is not a (particularly) higher-end company, and their phones at least are lower cost than Apple.
In the case of Apple, their phones were appreciably better up until two years ago or so. Their laptops have been physically better in fit and finish for at least a decade (http://paulgraham.com/mac.html).
Much of what has made Apple successful is the idea of what a Mac, an iPod, or an iPhone is. For most of the iPod's lifespan it was not the best product on the market, it was just the best marketed. In the case of macbooks, the hardware has been roughly on par with equivalently priced competitors for several years. But they sell the idea of what it means to be a 'mac person'. They get you invested in the idea that macs are better regardless of the reality.
And that strategy is as much about reassuring people who already own Apple products (fighting buyers remorse, and grass-is-greener impulses) as it is about selling more.
I wouldn't say it was just better marketed, although that is true. It was also better designed, both in its hardware and software. An iPod in your hands felt and looked great and the scroll wheel made it intuitive to use. Anyone could easily pick it up and check out what you had in your library.
Before I had one, I had an iRiver iHP-120[0], which had a plethora of features an iPod didn't have. But it was ridiculously hard to use if you didn't know what you were doing.
[0] http://edmundstarbanks.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/iriverihp...
(Sadly, ours never came to be, but that's a long and occasionally hilarious - in the DailyWTF sense - tale. Suffice to say, if your application crashes on trying to close any file, and the vendor's recommended workaround is to never close files, get ready for interesting times)
This is subjective, of course. I'm lost every time I have to change songs on a friend's iPod classic :-). Give me traditional buttons or a touch screen any day.
It was only 'intuitive' if someone showed you how to use it, which means... it wasn't intuitive.
They dropped that interface element quickly enough.
Intuitive (to me) would be the scrolling on other players...hit up it goes up one, hold up and it goes up increasingly fast. Maybe that's boring but it's completely obvious how to work it when you pick it up.
I first learned the dubious value of reading off a spec sheet after I bought my first iPod. No wireless, less space than a Nomad indeed. But wireless and more space than a Nomad doesn't mean much when your UI and synchronization system is a steaming pile of shit that makes me die a little inside at the mere thought of having to use it. An iPod's specs may not have been top-of-the-line, but the experience sure was in comparison to the competition.
A more modern example is the Samsung Gear Fit that I've complained about previously. Lovely piece of hardware that stomps on everything else if one goes by the spec sheet. Unfortunately, Samsung produced a gigantic steaming turd of software (both firmware and more so on the client software side) that makes me regret that I purchased it. Sure, a FitBit doesn't even have a screen, and it's limited in its capabilities, but at least it works.