Are you happy with your Mac or iPad? Join the club—and by that, I mean those customers surveyed by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which gave Apple a score of 86 out of 100 in this year’s review, giving the company its highest score to date.
Apple, which is judged within the computer category, has consistently ranked the highest of any hardware manufacturer surveyed for the last seven years. This year saw the company jump two points to its all-time highest score—which also happens to be the new ACSI industry-high for computer electronics—and puts a nine-point gap between Apple and its nearest competitors (Dell, Acer, and HP, all tied at 77). The overall satisfaction score for personal computers hit an industry high, too, climbing four points to 78.
According to a report from Jon Fortt at CNBC, Apple’s success this year can be partially attributed to the iPad. Fortt spoke with ACSI managing director David VanAmbug, who told him that, unlike the iPod and iPhone—which have never been incorporated into the survey because the devices lacked a definable category—the iPad was being actively tracked for this year’s survey, and made enough of a positive contribution to bring up Apple’s overall numbers.
According to Fortt’s report, the iPad is “the highest-scoring product Apple has, and therefore the highest-scoring product ACSI has ever tracked.” However, a representative told Macworld that ACSI did not actually break out individual scores per product, rather accounting for iPad owners under the same umbrella as MacBook and iMac owners, all of whom count towards Apple’s total satisfaction.
Updated at 3:48 PT with more information about the iPad’s score.