Ya' gotta wonder how supposedly intelligent people, especially professional analysts, can swallow the Wintel propaganda line so thoroughly and uncritically.

Take for instance the case of recent comments by one Allison Boswell of Allison Boswell Consulting, made to news.com in a report about the generally gloomy sales picture in the PC briar patch.

Ms. Boswell touts her Boswell Report as "a key tool to assist executives involved in managing portfolios of all sizes.  We provide a new perspective by offering the insights of key experts within each industry, such as retail buyers and store managers nationwide."

Now here's one of those allegedly expert insights from Ms. Boswell: Commenting on "dismal" sales of Macs at Sears, she observed "You would expect Apple to do well [at Sears] because less-sophisticated buyers shop there, but no."

Excuse me? Does Ms. Boswell really believe that the masses of PC-buying drones out there are more sophisticated than Mac buyers? Has she ever studied the education and income demographics of Macintosh owners? Hello?

No, Ms. Boswell, Wintel PCs -- not Macs -- are the computer favored by the great, unwashed, white-bread masses, simply because they don't know any better and are fed unsubstantiated propaganda supporting their ignorance by "experts" like you.

For example, my Mac-owning 14-year-old daughter engaged in a conversation about Macs with the bus driver on her way home from summer camp this week. This sophisticate told her how much he hated Macs, although he didn't know much about them, and he assured her that Apple would be going out of business very soon, and that he would be very happy when they did. Besides, he offered, it's a lie that Macs are easier to use than Windows machines. Windows is actually much easier to use. Duh. I wonder if he shops at Sears?

For a reality check, the bus driver and Ms. Boswell might check the July 1999 PC Magazine reader survey in which the people unfortunate enough to use Windows every day rate it "significantly worse than average" in overall satisfaction.

They might ponder the fact that Apple recently snagged four Industrial Design Excellence Awards from Business Week magazine (judged by the Industrial Designer's Society of America), and in fact has won more IDEA awards in the past five years than any other computer maker.

They might note that Apple's stock just broke through $70 this week while their competitors post lacklustre Wall Street numbers, or ruminate on the significance of Apple just having introduced a line of competitively priced computers that are two to three times faster than the fastest Pentium IIIs

Of course that would involve confronting the facts, rather than "sophisticated" Wintel mythology.

Charles W. Moore

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March 16, 2010