Author here. It wasn't a recommendation, it was just the only way I knew how to. "uv pip list --outdated" indeed has much better output, thanks!

Though this makes me wonder why are there 2 ways of viewing outdated packages, with wildly different output? The UX is mess...

Cause the "uv pip" entry point is designed to be backwards compatible with regular pip: https://docs.astral.sh/uv/pip/