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It doesn't help that the TPM spec is so full of optional features (and the N spec versions), so it's often annoying to find out what the vendor even supports without signing an NDA + some.

TPMs work great when you have a mountain of supporting libraries to abstract them from you. Unfortunately, that's often not the case in the embedded world.

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Even on desktop it's terrible, I wanted to protect some private keys of a Java application but there is no way to talk to a TPM using Java so handsandshouldersup gesture.

The TPM needs a way to authenticate your Java application, since the TPM otherwise does not know whether it's actually talking to your application or something pretending to be it.

This means you generally need an authenticated boot chain (via PCR measurements) and then have your Java app "seal" the key material to that.

It's not a problem with the TPM per-se, it's no different if you were using an external smartcard or HSM - the HSM still needs to ensure it's talking to the right app and not an impersonator (and if you use keypair authentication for that, then your app must store the keypair somewhere - you've just moved the authentication problem elsewhere).

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