There are numerous reasons to be nonstandard. For example when they built the world trade center in New York the thing was so huge that the vendor suggested they could have custom light bulbs that screwed in counter clockwise rather than the usual clockwise. This would keep the construction workers from stealing light bulbs.

You see a lot of seemingly gratuitous nonstandard behavior around batteries.

Some of it is, I suspect, carefully calculated - by creating a custom battery and assuring that your customers have to return to you to purchase a new one you can create a nice revenue stream.

Text books are so expensive because the market is so fragmented, the buyers completely locked-in; much worse than batteries. Where is the open text book movement?

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