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Is Apple Paying for Product Placement in Paperbacks?

I really have to wonder after reading “The Book of the Dead” by Doug Preston and Lincoln Child, which contained this oddly sychophantic paragraph:

She plugged in her laptop and booted it up. At the insistence of her husband, Bill, she had recently switched from a PC to a Mac, and now the boot-up process took a tenth of the time - zero to sixty in 8.9 seconds instead of two and a half plodding minutes. It had been like trading up from a Ford Fiesta to a Mercedes SL. As she watched the Apple logo appear, she thought that at least one thing in her life was going right. [Book of the Dead, p95, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child]

Hrm. Most of the book reads like the enjoyably light, fanciful mystery novel that it is, except for this jarring excerpt which reads like ill-conceived ad copy. Is this fawning, hyperbolic frippery literary filler, the author’s adoration for a product, or a publisher’s profitable side line in selling product placement? I hate to sound like a conspiracy nut, but stumbling across that was so jarring that I can’t help but think “paid.”

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