Incorrect. Original Design Manufacturers *design* and *patent* what they've designed. Apple designs and patents their own equipment.
They do outsource the manufacturing to companies like Quanta, Keytronic, and Foxconn, but that doesn't mean they wear the pants in the relationship, and they would be beholden to Apple to determine who they could or could not ship or sell units to. Purchasing from Apple is essentially a direct purchase without a third party.
The difference is choice.
What? I believe you've always been able to order directly from Apple. No middle-man required.
Imagine if you wanted an Apple computer you had to buy it through Best Buy or Radio Shack, and dealing with their personnel. The companies that do business this way are maddening. Elsewhere, companies like Cisco choose not to sell directly to buyers, making them go through a partner or reseller. This may have been an acceptable model years ago, but these days it's tedious and I think people expect more; they don't want to deal with a third party whose interests are not wholly aligned with their own. At least when you're talking about tech vendors, you can opt to deal with someone else who does business differently. Government enforcement of a given model is quite wrong-headed and needs to be stopped. It smacks of protectionism to me.
"Don't say anything until we can form a CYA Committee - not that those proles would understand it anyway!"
No, really though, I think some of the efforts would be heroic in nature. I would be interested in knowing how many agencies / companies / systems they have to integrate with, and how much push-back the people developing the system have had to deal with. Pretty sure there's a story there.
Unrelated, I'm not sure with rjmarvin's fascination with Cones of Shame is all about.
No amount of careful planning will ever replace dumb luck.