If you're going to attack Gruber for being an Apple apologist to the point of utter irrationality, then you don't want to attack the substance of this post, but rather its use in supporting his thesis: Apple is the best run business in the world. More specifically to this post: Apple sells laptops better than anyone else.

I refute it thus: http://m.techcrunch.com/2011/07/14/apple-continues-slow-but-...

Apple is a distant third in US laptop market share and they don't even crack the top 5 globally.

Whatever the user experience of their sales channel is, it hasn't stopped their competitors from out selling them.

What Apple diehards like Gruber seem to forget when they discuss the merit of Apple's marketplace strategy is that the product is only 1/4 of the equation. Pricing, sales channel, and hype are the other three portions, and Apple has been consistently beaten by the competition on these grounds for the entire history of personal computing - their portable gadgets excluded.

The fact of the matter is that the average PC buyer doesn't get on a computer at home and shop for a laptop. They either take the one that their workplace gives them, or they go into a store and talk to a salesman about all the nuances of buying a computer that have been covered here. They then purchase the cheapest laptop that meets their needs, and they go home that day with it.