Amazing marketing.

Somehow they have managed to convince people they are open source (they aren't) that they are a good architecture (they aren't) and they are good to teach children about hardware on (they aren't).

What do you recommended as an alternative? Does it stack up on price, features and ease of development?

Community + Support + Ecosystem + Everyone else has bad GPU drivers. Almost everyone else has GPU drivers which only work in Android and don't support Linux desktop. Unaccelerated Linux desktop is no fun.

Because they have a high street store?

I'm being flippant, but I think the point is important. What Raspberry Pi really brought to the table was making hardware hacking feel accessible. The sorts of people they're appealing to aren't looking for the fastest or best system, they're looking for something that feels easy and straightforward. They're cheap enough that I doubt price is a major consideration, and openness is almost a non-consideration among the populace at large.

It has the ecosystem. Not just the technical side, but it has mindshare in education. There will be more people who know what a Raspberry Pi is than an SBC.

Are there cheaper/more open SBCs that actually work? There are cheaper and faster but most have terrible software support.

Do you mean better, faster, _and_ cheaper in a single device? Honestly curious, what do you recommend over Raspberry Pi?

I've heard the Rock Pi4[0] is very good.

[0] https://shop.allnetchina.cn/