iFixit looking at a recent MacBook, said a whole lot of its internals were designated to that particular notebook. They said that only Apple would be able to replace such parts. Apple is also proclaiming their "Self Repair" program. They even say they'll rent tools for self repair. But with the hardware only working in each particular computer, they have got that all covered. And they'll simply stop supply of a part and then that computer will be dead.
We saw the user pays model first with computers in the old days, then the computer cost a lot. And then as prices dropped, you paid annually of the software. Such as with business IBM computers, from System 36 etc to small RISC IBM unix boxes that could do a fair bit for the time. The annual software cost in the 90's was almost the cost of a small IBM unix box.
The great leap backward was with printers - you'd buy a cheap ink jet and its ink cartridges cost a heap, and they lasted for 1000 pages. And if you left the printer idle the ink dried out and you'd use 20% of the ink supply cleaning the ink jets. A brilliant business model and Microsoft took notice. And Adobe too. Give any company a monopoly and they will abuse their power. Even without a monopoly companies will behave that way and not compete with each other. Once there was a cheap streaming movie channel with lots of content. Now there are a heap of them, they all cost much more, and they content is the same. Apple is a relatively small player but they are focused on forcing people to buy many of their products in order to get them to work. A watch needs a phone. Two factor often requires two devices. And now hardware is not upgradable. Unix is the answer for the rest of us. Think different.
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