The 400 is a good tool to learn basic programming which is admittedly what the goal set out by the foundation all those years ago.

The way I see it there are 3 primary consumer groups of pis: students, makers, and industry. 400 can work for students which is great, the other two need to share the original form factor. It was the makers who saw the potential of the pi and turned it into the richest ecosystem and best selling computer in history. They spent the money and made industry possible. I think to shun the makers for so many years in favour of industry is not right. It’s not a money issue either, makers could consume those 400000 pis a month.

If we want to talk about small business, what about all the little companies that sell pis and make this possible? What about the little companies that designed and built all the HATs and cases? Can’t imagine many people are buying those like they used to.

The competition has not been idle for all these years, there are alternatives. We will have affordable, performant risc-v boards this year. We have the rk3588 boards which are highly performant and will be the platform of choice for years to come. We have the rk3399 boards which are 100% supported in mainline and can be booted completely blob free. The software is not often not as complete as the pi but that is actually changing because they are actually available so we are developing for them.

All in all I’m just sad. I want to develop for the pi but they have decided we aren’t even worth the scraps. I want to spend my money and huge amounts of my free time to make this a better product for everyone but I can’t. I just think they have lost the goodwill of the makers and it will never be what it once was. That’s sad.

So twice the price in a useless form factor? The beauty of the original pi was the famous ‘credit card sized computer’. It’s the same SOC, they have just stuck it is a keyboard. Hobbiests wrote the majority of the guides and did all the hard work making them into off the shelf solutions for everyone else. No one is running octopi on a 400, no one is sending a keyboard to space, no one is buying them because they are not versatile. Same SOC, twice the price, far less useful. Defeats the purpose.

And how much do those cost when available? Am I going to build a £400 cluster of keyboards? The simple fact that 400s are even available suggests there are SOCs available, they have sold out to industry and that’s really all there is to it.

Do you really think IKEA would be sourcing different screens for each store to support local business? IKEA was only an example anyway, 400000 are made every month - that’s an awful lot of small businesses don’t you think? The numbers don’t add up, small business can’t be consuming nearly 5 million Pis a year, that is not small business.

Then I doubt that’s a small business since there are 460 IKEA stores worldwide and it is unlikely that would be their only customer.

And attach it to what exactly? You haven’t been able to buy a raspberry pi for years. I have owned every version of the raspberry pi ever made but I will think twice before buying another one even when available. They have failed on their stated goal of making computing cheap and affordable to all, 400000 Pis are still being made every month and every single one of them is sold to businesses. It was the hobbiests who made raspberry pi what it is and they couldn’t even put a couple thousand to the side for them to keep the ecosystem going. And before anyone say it’s all small businesses - I don’t believe that, I’ve seen those massive IKEA screens get stuck on the boot screen, that’s running on Pis.