American satisfaction with personal computers at all-time high!
Especially with their Macs…! 
The CNN Money article is entitled, “We like our PCs–but LOVE our Macs.”
DUH! 😉
I usually tell people that my major “superpower” is the gift and the curse of “seeing clearly.”
I saw this one coming.
The CNN Money article says, “Americans’ satisfaction with their personal computers is at an all-time high, but buyers’ happiness with Apple’s Macs continues to top Windows PCs.” An American Customer Satisfaction Index report released today showed that customers are the happiest that they’ve ever been (score of 78 out of 100) with their computers in the 16 years that the survey has been performed, but, ironically, the only Windows PC manufacturer that improved its rating this year over last year was Hewlett-Packard (HP), which announced last month that it is getting OUT of the PC business! HP achieved a score of 78 this year vs. 77 last year. Compaq, a low-end HP brand, got a 75 this year as compared with a 74 last year.
Other makers of Windows PCs, including Dell, Acer, Toshiba, Lenovo, and Sony, all got the same score and the same score as last year: 77.
Apple, on the other hand, achieved an 87 this year, up from 86 last year! This is the eighth straight year in with Apple led the PC industry. I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a guess that the increased customer satisfaction results from all of those brand-new Macintosh users!
Lately, I have come to view people who complain about their satisfaction with their Windows PCs with the same compassion that I NORMALLY reserve for ADULTS with self-inflicted gunshot wounds. In my humble opinion (IMHO), there are certain groups who prefer Windows PCs:
- Folks who don’t know any better! 😉
- Corporations (see #1). The people who don’t know any better are the executives making the purchasing decisions.
- Gamers with games optimized for Windows PCs. (I only object to THESE folks when I have to share a network with them – they make networks less secure, IMHO. Gaming PCs are pretty safe so long as they are kept OFF networks. )
- People whose minds are contorted in the same unnatural way as those of engineers in Microsoft’s Windows development areas. Yeah, Microsoft had to find those engineers SOMEWHERE!
There are probably other groups, but groups 1-3 pose the biggest problems in terms of security, once again, IMHO. The really GOOD news is that there appear to be fewer and fewer people in GROUP #1! (Who SAYS that people never learn?)
Even with the years and years of history of personal computers and the years and years of history of devices like iPhones and iPads and iPods, journalists like those with CNN Money CONTINUE TO ASK STUPID QUESTIONS, like:
Let’s look at the facts:
- PC (Windows type) sales have dropped in the United States. Remember all of the reviewers who were “stumbling around” and “didn’t GET it” when iPad debuted? (Coincidentally, that was the same month in which Google, Adobe, and 32 other Silicon Valley companies were attacked from China using defects in Internet Explorer (IE). Google eventually dropped Windows for internal use for security reasons.
- Apple’s market share of personal computers is growing fast. Gartner says it’s almost 11% in the U.S., a third place.
- HP and Dell sales are sinking.
My own PERSONAL opinion is that “corporate stupidity” is probably the only reason that Windows is around at all today, both as the result of the size of that market (purchases made by executives who don’t know what they are doing, technically), and as the result of the “Windows halo-effect” of people making the same bad choices at home that OTHERS have made for them at work! But I have learned not to make predictions that involve BOTH technical merit and human choices….
And then again, these opinions MAY just result from my “seeing clearly….”
-Bill at
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