Genius created the apple computer. Entrepreneurship brought it to the rest of us. There's probably about the same amount of genius as ever, there's just a lot more people hawking it these days.
Depends on how you're defining it, but attributing products to "genius" sounds awfully like a creationist fallacy. It's interesting that you should cite Apple; Woz's work on the Apple I and their current design process both seem exceptionally darwinian.
Woz just proves my point, though. He didn't worry about making money off the Apple I. That was all Jobs. Certainly, there are different kinds of genius. Jobs is a marketing genius. Woz is an engineering genius.
Tell me: How many post Apple I/II inventions of Woz are you familiar with? He certainly hasn't stopped inventing. He just doesn't worry about selling inventions any longer...
I'm going to have to disagree with that. It took surprising insight for the Woz to look at the same parts catalogs as everyone else and then (without even having the parts at first) do such extraordinary things with them. Many people had access to the parts, more experience, and the technical ability to do this earlier, they just didn't.
The iterative improvement that Apple uses to design and perfect products is somewhat darwinian but it lacks the random mutation and recombinative aspects that define evolution. I'd have to say (since the water has already been clouded by this new little corollary of Godwin's law) that it more nearly approximates intelligent design.
Not just Woz. Jobs did it too. Back then, and still today. If you think that the people who conceptualized and designed the iPod and iPhone aren't artists through-and-through, you've got another thing coming. The team works together, yeah, but you don't design beautiful things by committee.
Incidentally (to the OP), you always make multiple designs before you pick one. That's not loss of artistic process. I've got three drafts of a single chapter of the book I'm working on now. I've got something like 5 different possible melodies to fit a song I've been Garagebanding. That doesn't take away from the power of the individual when it comes to designing a product. (Considering how in-depth people have looked at Jony Ive's design process and inspiration, I find it sad that people still think Apple products are made through a generic idea-forming process, that the people barely matter in the creation process.
(Also, this author is not a particularly good one, and the fact that she's citing Tom Waits is not a good sign. Waits is a legendary practical jokester and story spinster, and all reports of his songwriting I've read say that he undergoes a very strict process when constructing his songs.)
