Yeah -- but one which I totally don't buy. It takes me all of 2 minutes to adjust to the transposed @ and " characters and back again, and I'd never even noticed the difference with Return before now. Feels like the author's just setting up a straw man to make the lack of a non-Apple ultraportable seem like it matters.
Except that your perception of Apple putting the consumer first is just an indicator of how well they've hidden the fact that they're actually putting Apple first. Steve & Jony are designers first and they try their hardest never to cut corners. Steve & Tim are businessmen out to make a buck or a billion, too. It just so happened that the confluence of their design and business processes lead to a highly profitable supply chain.
Ironically, the story began with a note on how Apple puts the UK consumer last.