ambivalent comment

I agree that Ballmer's an idiot, but just to play Devil's advocate (and in the highly uncharacteristic role of being ever so slightly critical of Apple, no less!), some believe Apple has thrived because it doesn't listen to customers either -- it tells them what they want. Steve “Apple” Jobs is famous for saying: “It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.” Is the iPod so popular b/c it's what people want, or do people want it b/c it's so popular? I don't know how it works exactly, but it seems that tech companies *do* need to listen to customers (and I think Apple does); they just need to be a lot better than Microsoft at responding to what they hear.