Start checking behind the bushes for a squinty-eyed chain smoker with a spooky voice, because we may have fallen headlong into a zone associated with an early-evening time of day. (Dusk or something. We're not sure.) Faithful viewer Oskar informs us that CNN/Money somehow dug up a survey which sought to determine "which [high-tech] companies customers were most loyal to"-- and Apple didn't make the cut to be named a "Loyalty Leader." Which is, y'know, probably fine with Apple, since it's a dorky title to be dragging around and would probably get it beat up on the playground at recess every day, but surely something has drastically upset the order of the universe if Apple doesn't rank as one of the most loyalty-inspiring companies ever to exist on this or any other plane of reality. Should we fear imminent armageddon?

Oh, wait-- never mind. It turns out that Walker Information, the research firm that conducted the survey, only solicited the brand loyalty opinions of "corporate information technology decision makers," and not actual human beings. (They're biologically categorizable as "furniture," we believe.) Is it any surprise, then, that "Cisco, Dell, Microsoft, and IBM" came out on top? Walker execuveep Phillip Bournsall perhaps says more than he means when he comments that "IT departments appreciate Microsoft more than individual users." That is, in fact, a deliciously ambiguous statement; do IT departments care more about the Redmond Beast than they care about the individual corporate desk-jockeys they nominally support? Or do they just like Microsoft more than the individual user likes Microsoft? We assume Phil meant the latter, but it's all good.

And of course IT departments appreciate Microsoft; it's the company that keeps them gainfully employed! With a near-100% user base in corporate desktop use, Windows is the one platform that'll never raise eyebrows when the purchase requisition sails past the beancounters and the higher-ups. Meanwhile, Microsoft's products are so chock full of bugs, security holes, baffling user interfaces, and two scoops of raisins that it's just what any IT help desk needs to grow up big and strong. In fact, you can practically hear that IT budget climbing every time "an unexpected error occurs." It's not paranoia, folks (well, not just paranoia, anyway)-- we've personally witnessed this attitude on more than one occasion among the Beige Sentinels of Corporate Computing: with Windows running on every desktop, IT departments need never worry about budget cuts or layoffs. After all, if the IT department is short-staffed, who's going to keep all those crucial Wintels limping along?

What's sick, of course, is that schools wind up switching from Macs to Wintels "because that's what they use in the real world of business," when, of course, schools generally don't have IT departments and help desks; they have the physics teacher, who once made the mistake of being seen while plugging in a router cable that had come loose and has since been the de facto Mr. Fix-It whenever anything higher-tech than a bagel with cream cheese goes wonky. Sad but true.

But we digress. Anyway, fear not; no doubt someone'll conduct yet another brand loyalty survey among real people and Apple will run away with the crown. Here's hoping the winner's title is something less tragic than "Loyalty Leader," though, because we really don't want the company dipping into its $5 billion cash hoard because it has to hand its lunch money over to the school bully every day.