I now hold the belief that any Canon camera that does not have Magic Lantern installed is broken.
In everyday use, most of the interface with a camera is with physical controls, at most your common interactions with the software is changing options that are part of a quick menu. While I would personally love to see Canon/Nikon/Sony step up here and create a proper, modern touch interface for these cameras, they won't anytime soon. Companies like Hasselblad that produce more specialized luxury cameras have come up with more modern interfaces for their recent cameras. Thus manufacturers don't want to upset their customers by changing their interface too much. It is no surprise that the camera industry is shrinking, and that the people most likely to buy new cameras are going to be those that already own an interchangeable lens camera. To expand a bit more on interfaces, there is an interesting argument for and against it. Plus, as you mention, some vendors are hobbling features to try to get users to buy more expensive cameras (like a 1.7x crop for 4K video on Canon, because they really want you to buy a C200 $7500). Stuff like an intervalometer and focus stacking should be standard on every camera. I do agree that camera manufacturers are purposely leaving out software features though. Though speaking of Android, Sony cameras do run a modified version of Android, the previous few generations of cameras had somewhat of an app store, and people even got hacked APKs running on the camera to add missing functionality.
The camera app crashing like it might on your Android phone is unacceptable on a camera, so they run more reliable and specialized code. Thus they tend to favor conservative reliability and interface continuity over anything else.
Realize that higher end cameras are meant to be a professional tool. Those are typical to low margins for a technology product.
The A6000 at $800 was crazy at the time, and the A7iii last year at $2000 definitely surprised Nikon and Canon with their mirrorless they were developing.Ī full frame sensor can easily cost $600-$1000 without even considering anything else, yet these cameras are in the $2000 range and include highly sophisticated stabilization systems and professional video features (e.g. Sony has been pushing the envelope pretty hard the past few years and been putting out some truly amazing cameras for unbelievable prices. I disagree, what you can get in a inexpensive body these days is pretty crazy. Has someone slapped Android on a decent camera yet? I was really surprised by how backwards this all was! Proprietary OSs, artificially limited functionality, anemic processors, interfaces out of the 1980s. After a while I gave up, went back to the store and got a cheap video camera that could do it, BUT again, I had to get the more expensive version, because the same model in the cheaper option didn't allow this particular use case. Apparently I got the wrong model and the one $800 more expensive would do this. Turning all the elements off still left me with a red dot in the corner. I needed to do some video work last year, so I basically followed Casey Neistat's suggestion for a Canon camera, only to find out it wouldn't allow me to export the video live via an HDMI cable without the camera's overlay on top. It really seems like something is off in the market - but there doesn't seem to be any sort of real change happening. The camera manufacturers use the lowest powered CPUs they can get away with, running proprietary real-time operating systems with horrible UX and no third party support. I'm sort of amazed at the cost of high-end cameras, especially when what separates it from a modern smartphone seems to be nothing but bigger/faster sensors and the ability to use big lenses.