It's bugs me they can get a patent on a shape with features that you or I could design in a couple nights. I thought the whole reason the world didn't already adopt better screw heads than blasted Phillips (like Robertson, or square bits for those who aren't familiar) is that licensing arrangements weren't economical.
That being said, pozi-driv and JIS "+" style screws are far superior to philips and readily available. Even in Europe half the time you see a "+" it's philips and it's kind of impossible now have everyone know the difference and to deprecate philips even though they do usually have markings.[1]
[1]https://rtstools.com/jis-vs-phillips-screwdrivers-and-where-...
I only buy the torx/star variants, since they're just superior.
Philips is nice because (untrained) people naturally will over-tighten the fuck out of every screw they encounter. Philips cams out and prevents them from going too far overboard. In fact its literal design goal was to make a screw that is hard to over-tighten.
I know if we used torx on some of our products, we'd spent 10000% more time on removing snapped screw bodies.
Is there a decent convention for how much a screw should be tightened, or is it fully case-by-case?
For day to day, 95% of the time you can tighten a screw gently until it stops, its head fully against the surface, then just "snug it up" a bit to seat it.
"Snug it up" is of course vague, so refer back to line 1.