Delphi has an amazing RAD environment. For building small, self-contained desktop apps (with cross-platform support!) it beats any other modern offering... if you can get past the ecosystem. The language and ecosystem very much show their age.

Anyway, I think this generation is missing out on the experience of building in a real RAD environment. I'm more on the backend, but from what I see the pinnacle is fast hot reload, which pales in comparison to what could be.

I've been thinking of jumping into this sooner rather than later because I see this becoming a Thing eventually. Are you enjoying it?

Fair argument, these devices (the Hiby R4, in particular, which is the one I have) are absolute tanks. Way too heavy and big to throw in your pocket for any reason, especially if you use a case. Still, it's nice to be able to (sort of) carry my own library around and never need internet to listen to it.

I think Fiio and Hiby are the closest that exist today. They have dedicated hardware and physical buttons for the things listed in your comment. However, they do still ship with a custom Android OS and you need the touch screen to navigate your library and such. On the upside, this lets you choose your media library app. On the downside, it still isn't as good as the touch wheel on old iPods. I, too, am waiting for something like this to return. The Hiby is good enough until then for me.

When I looked for a Plex alternative I settled on Emby. It still has some "premium" features but they're all just QOL, not necessary things. The base app is great and even has handy little features Plex doesn't, and so far, it runs on all the same devices with a much snappier UX on the client side.