I got almost all of my wishes granted with RP2350

Gross, the dev board uses micro-USB. It's 2024! Otherwise amazing work. Exactly what's needed to compete with the existing giants.

It saves cost and none of the features of USB-C (speed, power delivery etc) are supported. Makes sense.

the price difference from usb to usb-c is less than 2 cents

devil's advocate: cables for an average user is a different story. also not to forget the vast range of cables already existing out there.

also "proper" usb-c support is another can of worms, and maybe sticking to an older standard gives you freedom from all that.

You're confusing USB C and USB 3.1+. USB C is just the physical spec. You can design a cheap device that will only support USB 2 if you just connect ground, Vbus, D+ and D- and gasp add two resistors. It will work just as well as the micro-usb plug.

completely valid, but i would like to think the org is still designing for accessibility for newbies in mind.

like you said, the connector does not have to follow the standards. i have seen hdmi ports being used to carry pcie signal (not a good like but here is one such device https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/cards_adapter/pce164p-no6-ver...) amgon other things. it is still non-standard behaviour.