Also, how is the SD Card limitation on the Deck consumer hostile? The Steam Deck is an AMD platform PC. PCs typically do not even have SD card slots, and when they do, they are generic controllers plugged into the USB port.
To do SD Express, it requires a more expensive controller that can do PCI-E lane passthrough, and then you have to route those lanes somewhere and do it correctly. I am not aware of any laptop that opted to include an SD Express controller, and all of the Steam Deck competitors do not either.
The Steam Deck is advertised to implement a standard UHS-I card reader, and uses a better one that actually does do the full 104MB/s instead of the more frequently supported 52MB/s. UHS-I is common for 4k60fps cameras, such as Canon or Nikon bodies, or the GoPro, extremely few devices support UHS-II.
Like, I understand what you're trying to say, but nothing of that generation implements it, and the AMD SoC Valve uses afaik does not have the spare external PCI-E lanes to actually implement it anyways.
They've released hardware before.
The controller was kinda cool, I didn't get one with mine, but making a controller is an entirely different set of skills than making a computer.
Its not like Apple or other popular companies are any better in this regard.
And yes, Apple design is kind of shit, but in a consumer hostile sort of way, not in an incompetence kind of way.
The entry level deck is $399 but the 1TB one is $649. Almost $800 with tax and shipping for something that can't even play Unreal 5 games and has no proper expansion is inexcusable, not to mention the bizarre and shortsighted decision to have only one USB-C port on the device, and being locked onto the 15-watt mode of the chipset.
Some of that cost is the OLED update but frankly its deceptive and dishonest customer hostile pricing. The storage limitations are intentional to sell the higher tier Deck. Gabe didn't get 5 super yachts by being a "good guy." He's just maximizing his profit. There are no "good guys" in capitalism, instead its purely transactional and game theory dictated from top to bottom.
I do find it a little depressing that Chinese and Japanese companies are eating US companies lunches because they somehow are more open, more pro-consumer, and more affordable the US offerings. When in the past the US products were the more open and hackable ones and the imports were the proprietary and locked down customer-hostile messes. Not just this but a lot of electronics now. The hackable, learnable, fun, etc ones are foreign while the US domestic ones are overly 'not repairable' and 'not hackable' and by design to maximize profit. What a shame. How far we've fallen.