You're right. It is a provocative article. On the whole, though, it strikes me as the sort of article a columnist has to come up with when he's up against a deadline.
The heart of the article is whether or not to include tablet sales in a PC market category. If you do, Apple's sales numbers look much better than if they're not. But to whom does this matter? Apple shareholders for sure. Otherwise, who cares other than fanboys who view multinational corporations as if they are local NFL teams. In fact, I'm reminded of another article I happened across today that argued the
Amazon Fire and Nook Tablet aren't
really tablets because they lack some of the content creation features of the iPad. I'm simply not sure what the point of such haggling is other than to those in the groups noted above. (And for that matter such issues don't really matter even to shareholders concerned with profit rather than unit sales volume.)
The tech press (like the political press in an election year) is obsessed with horse race metaphors. But unlike a horse race, an NFL season, or even an election, there is no ultimate "winner" here. Perhaps if there were a "line" in Las Vegas for the rest of us to wager on the outcome at some specific date it would matter more. But when the outcome depends on how one happens to define a particular product segment, this sort of article mainly benefits the guy who writes it.
