It’s early days yet. Pogo pin connections are a start, allowing a “bare metal” re-flash.
Putting a bootloader into the MCU, whilst obviously possible, would just be a waste of space and resources, of no utility to the vast majority of consumers who would never use it, nor want it, nor even know how. And adding cost. Nevermind the complication of adding USB or Bluetooth connectivity.
These are just torches. They should not be over-complicated, just because it is possible.
Easily turned on and off-able is my test, combined with handing them to “muggles” to see how they manage.
Even I need crib sheets to understand some none-intuitive BLF stuff, I cannot retain all of it in memory, and no, my brain is still pretty sharp. It may make perfect sense to the designers, but, practically, a lot of it is unused/unusable. I like to play around with new things like all of us, but after a while determine a configuration that suits me, and never change it afterwards.
Configurability, and personal choice is great, but is it actually necessary, or worthwhile, in such a simple basic device as a torch ?
Frankly I think that some of the people developing code might contribute to the greater good better, if they applied their talents instead to e.g. 3D printing, CNC control, and other such useful stuff.
As for the hardware designers, ploughing the same old furrows, no real innovation, well, if it still works for them and their customers, so be it. The clever ones are probably too busy in their day jobs to be distracted with trivial things such as torch drivers.
I think that I have reached “peak torch”, and don’t have a use, or a want, never-mind a need, for much more.