The Sweet Raspberry Taste of Success Masks a Missed Opportunity
17th December 2024
The Raspberry Pi is a moral hazard because it’s been far too good to us. For the past 12 years, the Pi series has bombarded the world with extremely affordable, extremely useful computers designed purely to promote education, innovation and the democratization of digital skills.
The full spectrum of geekery, from precocious prepubescents to CEOs of specialist technical companies, has grown to expect an endless stream of well-engineered hardware backed by a mainstream software stack and a thriving ecosystem. From the $4 Pi Pico microcontroller to the new $90 Pi 500 complete desktop computer, Raspberry is what an Apple run by Steve Woz instead of Jobs might have looked like.
As a result, we Pi fans have been spoiled rotten. We don’t see the profound challenge of mastering cheap, powerful and manufacturable at scale – the impossible triangle that sank most of the UK’s first generation of computer makers. We complain when consumers can’t get boards during supply chain meltdown because of the insane success of the Pi in commercial use.