"Apple has become an industry leader not by catering to the conscious wants of its customers, but by delivering products that improve their quality of life, thereby defining what the users want. ""<p>I find this a bit double edged. If the customer can't get what they want, they ultimately don't stay/become a customer. They move to a different company/product, and are no longer an <i>Apple</i> customer.<p>If its perceived as a trend by the trendsetter, well, the industry will follow. Take for example laptops. You can't even open and replace hardware like RAM and SSD nowadays. The customer doesn't know they want to open the device, its only a minority who do, but now the industry standard has become laptops which are slim and difficult to open. I'd say that is a wolf in sheep's clothes. Or, take the 3.5mm headphone jacket for instance. Do customers want this as well? Or is it rather that the customers are herded into liking that change?<p>Apple also sometimes gets credit when it isn't due to them (I wonder if they'll get the credit for small bezels). That is because they're regarded as the leader. How many people believe x86-64 is due to Intel instead of AMD?<p>The above explains why even non-Apple customers care a whole lot about big decisions by Apple (such as the examples in the article, as well as bezel example, 3.5mm headphone example, and slim size laptop example).