To be fair, bundling a Java Runtime Environment will give you a decent head start...

Having to ship instructional assets in multiple (human) languages is a fair point, and one I hadn't considered - though in this particular case there are no movies or animations that I've seen.

Most of Dale's points are correct, though - but that doesn't make it a sane state of affairs, and it saddens me that we just accept it with a sense of dejected resignation instead of trying to do better. I had (obviously naively!) expected the the microchip shortage to prompt a massive drive to extract every bit of value from the ones already in service.