We need to progress past triple A's I think, and establish a slightly better, at least bigger capacity battery. I've used 18650s for a lot of things, and they function decently well for most things. Aren't as common as your double A's, and triple A's though. However, they aren't some specialised hardware, and can be picked up relatively cheaply, and easily from a variety of places.
18650 are different in voltage that your classical AA batteries, plus packing more energy into the battery while increasing the cost makes little sense when you simply buy rechargeable ones and use 4 or 6 of them to have one set always ready. Maybe it's just, me but talking about the extra cost of a few batteries and a cheap cable probably every single one of us is having laying around while discussing a device in which you plan to store thousands of $ equivalent seems a bit of a push.
As for why small producers do the cable thing, it's easy to understand, you include a good cable you have to rise the price a bit, you put in a junk one you have angry customers the cable is obviously junk, so why not get rid of all possible cable related complaints induced a bad batch and have the user decide for himself what to use.
I was quite intrigued by it due to the display and QR but what's with those dimensions, for real 4 inches wide? Hope it's not a trend and we're not going from wallets you can tuck in your pocket or hide beside flash drives to things the size of a tablet.