Irony- Customers do not know what they want!

Transitioning to a non-technical job, the first thing I was told to remember is "customers are always right and knows exacly what they want" and we have to meet his needs even if we thing there are better alternatives. Now is retrospect, I believe this statement has major flaws, and most of the time the customer is confused and doesn't know what's right or wrong. History teaches us a lot, and if you look back through modern history the customer has majorly been confused about what his/her needs are. The class example is an automobile, when it first started people were really confused why they needed to have an automobile when they had a perfectly fine horse cart to take them from point A to B, what they forgot was the costs of owning and maintaining a horse cart was far higher than the automobile, apart from the fact that its top speed was faster than that of a horse. Second example to quote here is what Steve Jobs did with the whole Apple gig.He had people not only embrace the product but adore it, 20 years ago if someone told me that you could actually listen to music on a device that fits in your palm I would answer back why! What is the need of having such a device, when my walkman can do the exact same thing except it can be hooked on to my belt. Now 20 years later, people like me can't get their hands off one. More often we see customers completely unclear about what their actual needs are, they are unsure and need guidance constanly from entrepreneurs/ manufacturers. A good manufacturer is not the one who creates a good product but the one who creates a need for the product. The old saying "Necessity drives invention" is challenged at every step in modern history. This often makes me wonder if it is the other way round today.