Personally the pricing changes are absurd even with inflation and memory prices in mind.
RPi is horrible value now you can get so much more from a lot of other boards it's not even a comparison now.
They didn't really exist before. And software support is still best on RPi. But they did really lose the plot because you could buy a whole x86 mini PC (new) for less and they're much better (unless you need GPIO).
This is something that a lot of people seem to forget. I remember a friend showing me a low-performance Linux-based devboard shortly before the release of the Raspberry Pi. It cost hundreds of dollars. On top of that, support for the board was worse than the support for most of the Linux devboards released after the Raspberry Pi (which often has poor support compared to the Raspberry Pi).
> unless you need GPIO
I'm not even sure how that is relevant in most use cases if cost is a factor. Microcontroller development boards are inexpensive and will hook up to the x86 mini PC via USB. If you're willing to pay a bit more, many Wi-Fi based options are available.
Totally agreed. Microcontrollers do GPIO better than a RPi ever did. An ESP32 or Raspberry Pi Pico can handle so much on their own.
https://www.tomshardware.com/desktops/mini-pcs/amazon-closes...
It's happening. The powers that be are now deciding what kind and how much compute you may have. Enjoy your 4 GiB cloud terminal. You won't be able to own much more without a D-U-N-S number.
Sure, today everything works... but take a board from 10 years ago and try to find a current software (linux distro or whatever) for that. For a RPi you can, but good luck with any other board.
The only exceptions are the mini PCs on x86 architecture (intel nuc, and similar chinese alternatives, but the prices of those are even worse than on RPis now)