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I think the difference is that designers have a vision of what the users really want, as opposed to what they say (or even think) they want. Whereas the PMs (in that example) are more the focus-group types.

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Design is more than that. It is what users really want, but it is also how they feel when they use it, how it works, how it looks, etc. PMs are great at getting projects done. They herd cats. But very few have studied design, industrial design, art history, architecture, literature, etc.

Jonathan Ive studied industrial design. Steven Sinofsky studied computer science.

I'm not sure if there's any particular significance to this, but the current head of PM for Windows is Jensen Harris and his degree was in music composition.

To (mis)quote Henry Ford: "If had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me a faster horse."

The iPhone, iPod, and especially the iPad represented a near-total re-conceptualization of the product in that space.

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