Rob Enderle never ceases to amaze me. The man is a master at getting his name published, and that is frankly the best thing I can say about him. For those who don't know who is he, Mr. Enderle is an "analyst" who heads up his own "analyst firm" called The Enderle Group.

Mainstream journalists love working with Mr. Enderle because he always provides a quote. When you are on a deadline, and have to have a quote to finish your article, turn it in, and get paid, you tend to be happy to work with anyone that will come through; so, it doesn't much matter that Mr. Enderle is one of the most ignorant folks out there making a living as an "analyst." In other words, he gets quoted simply because he provides quotes. I have had more than one such mainstream journalist tell me that about him, by the way.

For his part, Mr. Enderle himself seems to get validation from the number of times he is quoted. Indeed, he has bragged about that on his site and in "columns" he writes for such media outlets that publish him.

So why does this matter? Mr. Enderle likes to write about Apple. A lot. His favorite thing to write is that Apple will soon be dead. In fact, he has made the Apple Death Knell Counter four times, the current record for one person.

If he is so wrong, then why is it that we cover him so much at TMO? Honestly, I am not sure. Between Paul Thurrott and Rob Enderle, there's really nothing of consequence spewed forth by either one of them, but like a bad train wreck, I just can't look the other way when either of them gets going. Especially with Mr. Enderle. The guy simply has no grasp of the issues in which he professes to be an expert.

Take this week's column at TechNewsWorld, for instance. In this piece, Mr. Enderle raves about Apple's fantastic marketing.

I think it ironic that Mr. Enderle thinks Apple is great at the one thing I think the company does deplorably. While Apple's marketing has been spot on when it comes to selling iTunes Music Store (iTMS) downloads and iPods, the company's refusal to market OS X, or the specific benefits of running a Mac, has not led to fantastic sales.

Indeed, I think the Switcher campaign has been one of the most successful campaigns in recent times. I know that many people think the Switcher campaign was a failure, but the reality is that the Switcher campaign was the one thing that helped sustain Apple's mediocre market share at a time when the company's processor woes left the installed user base waiting for the next big thing. The proof is in the pudding in that Apple had a significant part of its sales from the Apple Store going to people new to the platform.

Otherwise, however, the proof is also in the pudding for the rest of Apple's sales. Those sales have been lackluster, for a variety of reasons to be sure, but I pin much of the blame on the company's feel-good, but substance-less, advertising. Again, note that the Switcher campaign had specifics; Switchers said exactly why they Switched and liked it, and that included substantive issues such as features, the fact that things actually work on the Mac, etc.

So what's to like about Apple's marketing? Read Rob Enderle's piece if you want his take, but the real point of this column is what Mr. Enderle closed with. After spending many paragraphs extolling the virtues of Apple's marketing, Steve Jobs' genius, and the value of branding, he goes off into Enderle World. It's as if he can't possibly write anything vaguely cogent without sticking in a piece of Bizarro Thought to really mix things up. His closing:

An Apple 'What If'
I still think, given the massive success of the iPod, that Apple could have done wonderful things by using its UI and hardware design skills on a Wintel platform product. What if Apple, in conjunction with HP, had built an iTunes PC to go with the HP-branded iPod?

What if this PC had an Apple hardware design and used a skin to give Windows XP an Apple-like user interface, and if the application load were similar to what you would get with an Apple?

And what if, like the Ferrari laptop from Acer, Apple played a visible role in insuring the user experience? Consumer Reports consistently rates Apple at the top in terms of customer satisfaction.

I wonder how well the product would sell. It would be an interesting test, regardless, and one we'll likely never see. But who knows? Both Apple and HP have a history of surprising us, and we can only wonder what their next surprise will be. Maybe the HP iPod will, in fact, be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Rob Enderle just doesn't understand what Apple does. My personal opinion is that he just can't see outside the Wintel world; it seems that he just can't conceive that any company could possibly want to do business in the PC market without wanting to be a Wintel clone maker. Never mind that the current commodity market is completely unsustainable (for those keeping score at home, I am still meaning to write a column on that), and never mind that no one in the Wintel world is making a profit on PC sales besides Dell. In Mr. Enderle's limited mindset, making Windows boxes is the only business there is, period, and please don't confuse him with the facts.

Furthermore, he seems to not understand that a Mac is both the hardware and the software, that Macs work well because Apple controls "the whole widget," as Steve Jobs is wont to say. Apple's iApps -- Mr. Enderle's "application load [that is] similar to what you would get with an Apple" -- work well because they are part of that whole widget. The user experience he refers to is so good because Apple controls that user experience.

Also, offering those applications would mean that Apple would bloody well have to port its iApps, which depend in part on Mac-specific technologies, to Windows. Such a porting effort would be a remarkable effort that would also require Apple to offer support to Windows users for those apps.

If Apple were to work with HP to sell an XP box, Apple wouldn't control the hardware, wouldn't control the operating system, and wouldn't control that famous user-experience. If Apple doesn't control it, it will be just as bad, or nearly as bad, as any other Windows box, and that could seriously end up biting Apple in the proverbial nether-regions. There's a circular kind of illogic in that scenario that seems obvious to me.

IT WOULDN'T WORK!

IT'S A STUPID IDEA!

WHO PAYS YOU FOR YOUR "ANALYSIS," MR. ENDERLE?!?!?!?!?

Sigh. Again, I wish I could just walk away when I read this sort of absurd nonsense, but I can't.