No it's not better, but it's also not a regular occurrence for items like that. After the hammers incident happened quite publicly, in the '80s I think it was, it became tougher for companies to pull crap like that even if it only really happened a few times. I've heard of more complex or specialized equipment coming with some outrageous "support" costs, but it's still often cheaper or no cheaper than the commercial equivalent would be. Depends on what exactly it is.