Take electric tools. If I have a Milwaukee setup (lawn mower,leaf blower etc) and I buy a new drill. If I want to use the batteries I currently have I’ll have to get a Milwaukee drill.
Yes this is good business, but not all industries do this. Why?
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Universal ideology’s are common when it makes sense or law has dictated that it be common ie IEC connectors, fig 8 connectors, USB-C etc. but if you take a look at apples choices over the years, while inconvenient, they have always been in the bid for better performance or space saving (FireWire 400 and 800, Mini DVI and Thunderbolt etc). And in the case of proprietary batteries, it’s just a way of ensuring a consumer buys more from the brand and makes it more sensible to continue to buy their products. Also better brands have better battery packs with better power management that ensures the battery lasts longer.
This is not new. People forget at the start of the mobile phone age that every brand had its own proprietary connector for headphones and microphone and that sometimes even used to vary from model to model. It took quite a long time for the headphone jack to make its appearance (10 years at a guess) and even longer for USB to make its entrance. It’s taken us a LONG time to get to the standardised USB-C connector. It could be argued that apples 30-pin and lightning were one of the more stable formats as they covered a lot of device models (iPhones, iPads and iPods).
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