It's not that 37signals writes software for themselves and no one else: they write it for themselves and people like them.

Their thinking is that they know themselves and what they want, so they seek to satisfy their needs. If they tried to satisfy other people's needs – needs they don't have or understand – how will they know how to succeed?

Companies do that, yes. Apple is doing it by adding enterprise features to the iPhone – I'm not sure Apple gets the enterprise culture, and Apple employees probably don't use Microsoft Entourage, but they're adding enterprise features to satisfy a customer that isn't them.

37signals has chosen not to do that. And I think that's a choice they can make. I also don't find anything inherently wrong with arrogance.

Norman's article seems contradictory. He says at the beginning that simplicity is bad, but says customers complain about complexity, then he highlights Southwest Airlines refusal to add requested features as a good thing – but 37signals is bad because they don't add requested features.

I love my Backpack. I've enjoyed using Writeboard in the past. Ironically, I feel like Norman's saying I'm dumb for being satisfied with these tools.

Norman's post reminds me of designers complaining about the success of MySpace. "It's so poorly designed, it's success must be a fluke! If people only saw a well designed option they would abandon MySpace." Here Norman is saying 37signals doesn't deserve success because they aren't doing things the way he's familiar with.