I think the point is that PMF is a significant milestone on the journey. But it's not the destination. You can still mess it up despite achieving PMF.
And I don't think "keeping investors happy" is the key, either. Plenty of successful founders with unhappy investors.
I'm struggling to see how you could force adoption of a product in a way that matters. The example given was Pebble, who were struggling against Apple. Apple still needed PMF, despite their market dominance. If their product was so bad that it didn't solve the market need, then it would have failed despite their money and effective monopoly. I don't think PMF is irrelevant, it's just not the only necessary thing. You can still fail despite having PMF, but you have to have PMF to succeed.
But I do use them, so I must gain some benefit from them.
There's even more trash that doesn't get used and we never hear about (or hear about and decide not to use). A lot of that is produced by large companies with big budgets.
And that’s what’s playing out irl- companies that last are ones that keep investors happy
The product is fungible and incidental - if you can use other means to force product adoption then PMF is irrelevant