Of course there can be a manufacturer warranty, there just isn't a legal requirement for one (and it can have rules like "talk to the dealer if you bought it recently, we cover you only when you can't go through them anymore")
Precisely. Most of the time electronic device manufacturers set the commercial warranty[1] to one year, but that's purely their prerogative. That's why you can go the Apple Store with your MacBook during the first year[2] even if you bought it from FNAC or Amazon or whatever. Apple Care extends that duration to three years, and possibly sets additional coverage terms like with Apple Care +.
On top of that, as merb said, following the EU directive, local law (in France, that's the Hamon bill) says the legal warranty of compliance[0] covers for the whole two years. So Apple can tell me to buzz off past the first year if I bought their hardware from Amazon, but so that I can go through them directly instead of going the roundabout way through the seller during the first year. The seller can never tell you to buzz of (as long as you duly prove the defect past 6 months as merb said), even during the time a possible commercial warranty applies, but it can be more efficient to go through the manufacturer directly, as is the case with Apple Stores, but I've been using this for other brands where the wait list was months long through the seller whereas the manufacturer fixed it in less than a week and even footed the bill for the postage.
