The 90D appears to be extremely competitive with the D7500. Indeed, doesn’t look like the D7500 is competitive with the 90D at all! The D500 is, of course, a completely different beast aimed at an entirely different target audience. Nikon has also gone on record that it is the last of its kind, and Canon, with their sales and marketing data and smart business analysts may have determined that it’s not worth it to compete with it at this time. The resources that could go toward a 7D3 are most likely being 100% directed towards the R project.
Meh, the lack of the AF extension modes seems to be perfectly reasonable product differentiation. The fact that software has zero marginal cost does not mean that it is economically sound to put all the software in all your products.
The AF cases, I guess, could have been included. After all, they could be construed as a ”novice” feature of sorts.