Actually, people care a lot about quality. All of the examples given (ABBA, friends, etc) are classics. They are remembered when others are forgotten. This alone is a pretty good definition of "good quality".

Conneuseurs or hobbyists by definition go beyond mainstream level. But before becoming an enthusiast, they first appreciate mainstream quality. Since they want more, they look for the next level of detail to be good. After all, it's not a hobby if you do the same thing over and over. (Some turn into snobs and forget what they initially appreciated. That's human psychology and has nothing to do with products themselves.) Overall, any enthusiastic endeavour brings diminishing returns. Once crossed a quality threshold, most satisfaction is obtained. Anything better brings only marginal levels of happiness solely from the product.

So, the article contains very nice observations but the main conclusion is wrong. Satisfaction vs quality curve is logarithmic and once a certain level of quality is achieved most satisfaction is obtained for general public.

Hobbyist and enthusiast go further but get less satisfaction. I think they do it because it's a hobby now and that brings a different type of satisfaction (of being a hobby) that is weakly correlated to quality deltas. Once a hobby, even minor quality improvements matter within the context of the hobby (maybe joy of discovery or going farther). But that aspect doesn't matter for general public. This observation is also nicely there in the article.

This is my 2 cents on the topic. Very nice article!