What? Some kind of cognitive dissonance here, maybe. People do not queue up around the block waiting for hours on launch day for something they do not want. People very much want exactly what Apple is making. They build exactly what people want.
If you want an example of something that people do not want, would never queue up for, and should not have been made? Metro.
In regards to the comment above on Metro fitting well on Xbox? Not a chance - Metro is terrible and confusing to use on Xbox, and the adverts make it even worse. If the xbox had launched with Metro as standard, it would have gotten very negative launch reviews.
I think the point he was trying to make was that if Apple had issued a poll before launching the iPad, people would most likely said "it has to run my current OSX Apps and offer a way to switch back to OSX" because they would consider the iPad a computer. Re the loud complaints about lacking USB ports etc. when the iPad launched.
What Microsoft needs is someone in upper management with a vision about what products they want to make and the persistence to make them happen. That's a bit difficult to accomplish when there is a management shuffle with some top executive deciding to spend more time with their family roughly every year.
I think he means that Apple users, for example, weren't demanding an iPhone. That's not why Apple built it. They didn't ask the customers what they wanted and the resulting product was the iPhone.
Apple came up with the idea of the iPhone and built it. When the public saw it, we thought, "Holy shit! I've gotta have that!"
The point is that the people didn't know that they wanted an iPhone until Apple showed it to them.
If you want an example of something that people do not want, would never queue up for, and should not have been made? Metro.
In regards to the comment above on Metro fitting well on Xbox? Not a chance - Metro is terrible and confusing to use on Xbox, and the adverts make it even worse. If the xbox had launched with Metro as standard, it would have gotten very negative launch reviews.