Shit. I guess my or anyone else's loyalty hasn't mattered. I've bought two competing products during the drought and now we are going to have maximum suckage from them since the investors will be driving the bus now. How long before they intentionally hold back functionality and hide it behind some bullshit subscription?
Outside of a few small local businesses that actually care about doing right by people, loyalty hasn't mattered for decades dude. Companies don't give a shit about any of us. Why even bother thinking in terms of loyalty, it's completely misaligned with how they operate.
I thought they started from the idea of creating an affordable device mostly for people that need and can't afford a proper computer... I guess money gave them amnesia
They did, and they still have the rpi foundation with that goal, as well as the for-profit subsidiary.
It's a flaw with effective altriusm-- you have a goal of fixing some large scale problem and at some point you realize you need large amounts of capital to expand your impact. But the interim period you are just going to be amassing wealth with this idea of doing good. And even then, you may never reach a point where you feel like you earned enough to solve your problem. I.e sam bankman fried
Now I'm not saying that rpi foundation hasn't done good in the world. I'm just saying that they did start off with a lofty goal and it is clear that they are wanting to expand and make more money. Maybe this means someday they'll be able to do even greater things through the rpi foundation.... but I'm not optimistic
I have to say I haven't looked into RPI history, I only remember a video where they were marketing a device that is affordable and very much suitable for learning programming, mostly aimed at kids.
Remembering that and seeing them now on the exchange kinda leads to a contradiction in my mind. Especially since a year ago you couldn't even buy a device if you had the money, let alone if you couldb't afford one as they intended at the beginnings.
They released a device with the intent of being a tinker kit for programming and interacting with the physical world. The next technological jump for hobbyists from PIC to Arduino, became an ARM SBC.
Of course, they released a cheap ARM SBC, and industry quickly learned that these are great for rapid prototyping and any case that called for a small low-power Linux system.
I wouldn't say they lost their way. There's still a great hobbyists market around it, and tons of good competition. I'd say it's more like they are a victim of their own success.
The new ones are power hungry expensive monsters anyway. There are cheaper clones out there and I had pretty much decided never to pay for the gucci brand anymore.
The last project I did with one was build a moon and tide clock - all written in python with a motor controller, external display and individually addressable led lighting.
They’re also great as diy audio streaming devices for whole home audio.
The 5 is already somewhat enshittified. The Non Standard USB power that makes you buy a propietary PS is one example (which I found out after buying one for my son).
I agree. Pi5 apparently uses 5v@5A max, which is outside the usbc-pd specs. Not sure why they didnt go for usbc-9v in and use onboard components to convert the power to something lower for cpu ( which i assume it already does from 5v )
The 3B was a far superior alternative to the NES Classic I couldn't get at the time (and taught me what little I know about Linux - I even got a lesson in sudo one time when a command wouldn't work). o7
Honestly... when I was doing my research, for the power consumption and the flexibility of Raspberry Pi, nothing came close to it, at least not at the time (2016). Since then, I've never even bothered to look at it's competition.
