I suspect it's because the enviroment and consumers are different. People are no longer okay with you saying you think different. They need you to prove it. They need you to show it.
With Apple, a lot of their advertising focuses on what's different about them but they tell that narrative in a way that conveys that they came to this conclusion (aka the product being sold) by thinking about the problem in a way that hadn't been thought about before. They are still narrative but they have to make it believable in a different way.
A lot of others are doing the same but usually not doing as good a job on the latter, but they still focus on proving what it is they value, by the decisions they make in building the product.
With Apple, a lot of their advertising focuses on what's different about them but they tell that narrative in a way that conveys that they came to this conclusion (aka the product being sold) by thinking about the problem in a way that hadn't been thought about before. They are still narrative but they have to make it believable in a different way.
A lot of others are doing the same but usually not doing as good a job on the latter, but they still focus on proving what it is they value, by the decisions they make in building the product.