Except that it's true for most OEMs. Not long ago Sony offered to ship its computers without all the crapware, but was going to charge IIRC $25 to do it. Public outrage had them pull the extra fee. It's widely known that most OEMs subsidize costs through crapware.
Very true. I knew the author wasn't speaking in absolutes and neither was I.
However, there are quite a lot of people such as myself who think nothing of planning and building their own systems to save money and get quality components.
And there are those who will purposely seek out machines that are available with no bundling in order to start with a fresh install. And those numbers have grown quite a lot in recent years. Yet there are still large numbers of 'unsophisticated' users who buy the machines with bundled crapware, as you say, because they don't know any better.
Good thing for me because I get decent money from a lot of folks to expunge this crapware and secure their machines with lean, efficient applications to guard against further exposure.