On the original topic- Over my first 5 or 10 years into Britbikes, I became firmly convinced that Boyers were indeed bad, based on my personal experience with several dozen failed Boyers. Since that time, after studying the topic on many Britbike, cafe racer, and classic bike forums, and after learning about the history of availability of OTHER brand electronic ignitions and THEIR failure rates (somewhat anecdotal, based on the limited number of online members reporting failures), I reached an opinion-altering conclusion:
Boyers were the ONLY generally available ready replacement EI for classic Britbikes for quite a few years; therefor, any failures would be the ONLY failures that could be experienced and/or reported. The fact that I had acquired bikes with failed ignitions may have had more to do with previous owners connecting batteries reverse polarity than anything else.
I've conducted surveys on a couple of forums; with several other brands entering the market a dozen or so years ago, it is becoming clear that the number of reported failures as compared to the number of installed units, points to Boyers actually being RELATIVELY less prone to failure (although NONE are immune from reverse polarity damage if wired wrong).
Here on this forum, there was an excellent in-depth comparison done to compare the advance curves of several brands of EIs as well as stock AAU/points. Very nice to see the differences in starting/idle maps, and advance curves through the rev range.
Not too long ago, the "conventional wisdom" was that Tri-Spark were THE superior EI (although a bit spendy). Lately, more and more reports have been coming in regarding failed TriSpark units; thankfully, follow-up reports are generally very positive as relates to warranty replacement (similar to follow-up reports of Boyers).
So, all told, I think the answer to the original question is "NO".