It is a balance, which is why Steve Jobs got to say what he said and do what he did: with his experience in Zen Buddhism, he understood, above all, balance.

Design is two things: understanding people, and creating. You have to balance a pure empathy and understanding of needs and desires with uninhibited creativity. Only then will you create something that people both want and have never seen before.

http://blogs.plos.org/neurotribes/2011/10/28/what-kind-of-bu...

Maybe. But correlation does not imply causation. Users like beautiful quality products that also function as status symbols. They like when the choices have been made for them so they don't have to walk around Best Buy for 2 hours trying to narrow down which laptop they want out of 30 others. But not necessarily someone ignoring their needs and replacing them with his own.