Yeah, I'm inclined to think that Lenovo is surfing on Thinkpad's stellar reputation that predates the jump in quality Apple gave the industry.

Thinkpad used to be the best laptops on the market, and in many ways they're still kinda like the old thinkpads. But Apple raised the bar and Lenovo didn't bother following the bar up. I've actually found that some of the higher-end Dell devices are the best at being "apple for Win32 users" but the problem is nobody wants to trust Dell because they make so much utter crap.