It has been almost impossible to buy R-PI for so long now.
The foundation say they are still manufacturing 400,000 a month - but where are they going?
Certainly not to many retailers.
Is it time to find alternatives, and walk away from R-PI?
It has been almost impossible to buy R-PI for so long now.
The foundation say they are still manufacturing 400,000 a month - but where are they going?
Certainly not to many retailers.
Is it time to find alternatives, and walk away from R-PI?
The RPi provided a full computer with HDMI and USB ports at a revolutionary price. We need to be grateful that this pushed the price of hobby electronic modules down to consumer price points and proved that it was possible to create a successful product using this strategy. The door is now open to someone (including Raspberry) to take this business model to the next level.
Designing a decent computer module that costs between $20 and $50 is no longer hard to imagine. The next level is probably going to be all about the eco system - both hardware and especially software. Imagine a $25 pocket computer that loads self-configuring applications, dragged seamlessly from an app database. Plug and play peripherals. A software development environment that is simple enough to harness a massive number of users developing proper self-configuring apps automatically published in the app database.
It sounds like a smart phone without the display and that may be how it converges, but the key is an eco system that enables smart people, who are not programmers, to create polished hardware and software applications in their field of expertise.
There are millions of RPIs bought with this promise, but gathering dust because this missing link has not been bridged.
Yeah there's no doubt the R-PI was revolutionary and kick started a whole generation of great things.
However at the moment the R-PI is a unicorn for most folks.
Yeah there's no doubt the R-PI was revolutionary and kick started a whole generation of great things.
However at the moment the R-PI is a unicorn for most folks.