I thought we were done with this, having corrected all the wrong assertions, but it continues...
I am not going to draw out a long debate.
Problem is that when you make statements that are not true we have a duty to correct them. When you make unfounded allegations as to the morals or legal behaviour of people we have duty to refute them. You are inviting a long debate by continuing to do so.
I have no problem with one expressing a differing opinion to mine as to the value proposition of this product or that. I have no problem with one pointing out technical problems with a product, if they are actually problems. But....
Never mind my comprehension of purchase orders, I am writing them all the time. There is no way a bunch of schools are going to commit to buying anything that does not exist. This is not how the Foundation works. They design and make the thing on a shoe string budget and then see if it flies. If the schools, or anyone, wants it all is good. No crowd funding, no banks, no venture capitalists.
...it seems to me.. $5 is the defacto discount price (at one per customer), $9.99 seems to be somewhere closer to the retail price
How can you say that given the very clear story told by Coley above? Amazing.
In the original crowd sourcing, we had a choice to buy two and the Raspberry Pi Foundation promised it would deliver one to a worthy child.
Now reality has completely faded away. The Raspberry Pi has never been funded by crowd sourcing. There has never been such an offer to buy two and have a third donated to some poor kid.
I think you are getting confused with the failed One Laptop Per Child project. A totally different thing.
Upton was really the educational visionary that all the promotion claims, he would not be working in the for-profit Raspberry Pi Trading side and for Broadcom. He'd be directly developing the educational infrastructure of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The fact that he quit the foundation board and went to Broadcomm seemed to be a legal defensive moved to put all the early promotion decisions far in the remote past.
Why on earth should a guy not have a job for frikken sake?
And your assertions of something bad going on with "legal defensive moved to put all the early promotion decisions far in the remote past." is simply slanderous.
I suppose I am simply jaded by the fact that so many have previously claimed the educational value of their computer platform or application to parents and failed to deliver.
Yep. Except the Pi has delivered. Over years. At one tenth or one thousandth the cost (Compare to equipping schools with gadgets from other well know vendors). All is good.
Education rarely gets good results from being overrun by promotional hype.
There has never been any "promotional hype". Nobody could afford it.
... But this is a sophisticated effort to create a brand in direct competition with Parallax. So why should I welcome their promotional buzz here without lampooning it.
Wow, really ?
If it really were in direct competition with Parallax, why would anyone make Prop HATS, or get Prop tools working on Pi's ??
Sure, it comes as a Uncased Module, but far from being in direct competition with Microcontrollers, I see it as a more useful seeding interest.
PI's lack ADC/DAC's and 'Real time' on an OS is never quite the same as 'Real time' on a MCU.
I got my Pi as a nice, little, portable, dedicated system to program a Propeller with.
It's the "reference" package. Once setup, I don't have to ever touch it. Turn it on, write code, program Prop, turn it off. All on a battery, if I want to.
I do want to correct one hype assertion. Maybe a couple.
Yes, there is hype. That hype is coming from all sorts of people, who aren't part of the foundation, who see possibilities and who are expressing excitement about them, or offering products related to them.
Interestingly, those people aren't seeing the same sorts of possibilities with other products. The combination of features, form, price, accessibility hit a resonant note with a lot of people, and that hype is of the genuine kind. (for the most part. There are always some types abusing it, but that's a minor league worry at best)
I simply found the original crowd funding offensive on the Parallax Forums
Sorry but I have to reiterate, there has never been any "crowd funding" of the Raspberry Pi. Real people put real money into it at their own risk. Please stop it with these non-facts.
Don't forget everyone, as if you did not know, the Propeller is a wonderful thing. The Pi is a wonderful thing.
@altosack
You might like the VoCore ... The serial port will connect to and program a Propeller
Has anyone ever done this ? It takes more than a serial port; it also takes control of the prop reset pin (and propeller-load compiled for it, etc.). All told, the C.H.I.P. outcompetes the VoCore by many objective measures (price, speed, memory, storage, Debian), but neither has the propeller HAT that the Pi has.
I seem to be more suited for electrics than electronics where cobbling / soldering is required, so this is an important consideration for me.
However, if I run across an application where tiny and very low power are the deciding criteria, I'll keep the VoCore in mind.
Learning assembler on it is one of the high value adds that warrant the price Parallax needs to charge.
I'm totally with you. But..."needs to charge" does not translate to "needs to buy"
Today I had one short forum post to present the idea to one young chap that if he wants to learn assembler then learning with a Propeller is a nice easy way to go with immediately useful benefits.
I failed. In this situation the hassle and expense of ordering and waiting for a Propeller board loses out to learning on a 6502 emulator or trying to hack actual ARM assembler on the Pi itself.
I hope he will be back when he realizes why he might want to be programming in assembler.
Yep, the VoCore is a MIPS processor as seen in many domestic routers.
We have programmed Props from such machines. We have the Spin compiler and loader taken care of. I'm sure it can be done from the VoCore, a similar architecture/OS, as well.
I hope to have one soon to do this for real.
The CHIP does not "out compete" anything. It does not exist yet, or at least nobody has one.
I'm a big believer in asking for some dollars for all value added. Doing this avoids race to the bottom conditions, and it also centers product offerings on the more high value customers and prospects too. Doing that is where the good margins come from.
Not everyone will recognize that value, and for them, the price will be too high. No worries. They have options and should use them.
The trick in this is to understand where the line on all of that is. Add the wrong value, or ask too much for it, and a lot of money is left on the table. On the flip side, not asking enough for high value means high volume, but really thin margins too. Also money left on the table.
Getting it right means asking enough to fund the ongoing life of the company, which is new products, not just enough to pay the bills today.
That person likely values his dollars more than his time. Given a large enough time investment and or lack of success, they may well reevaluate both of those things. All up to them.
Not sure you failed at all. How people boil down, "what is worth what?" varies considerably, and sometimes a class or two at the school of hard knocks can make the bell ring, triggering a different value perception.
By the way, this dynamic is precisely why the Pi being produced by a foundation makes so much sense. Serving the masses doesn't generally pay anywhere near as well as serving high value to people who appreciate it does.
Apple takes down some 80 - 90 percent of phone profit. Samsung and a few others take down some 80 percent of the total market share for phones.
Big lesson there for everyone. Share does not matter. Margin does.
And that's in the context of goals. If the goal is to be market #1, great! Samsung is knocking it out of the park. If the goal is to be revenue #1, Apple is crushing everybody else.
You are doing your MBA marketing speak thing. I love reading it over tea in the morning
It's all "dollars" and "value added" etc.
None of that was my concern at the time. I'm encountering a young guy who expresses a desire to learn assembler. For whatever reason I would like to help. I just think it's a fun interesting thing to be able to do that I would like to share with others. I have nothing to gain by suggesting Propeller or ARM or Intel or MIPs or whatever. I only have some irrational desire to be helpful. Irrational in that I have no gain to be made by helping, in the capitalist, profit seeking, sense.
However, the Prop and PASM is a joy to use and the simplest assembler I have ever used. So that is my suggestion.
Basically shot down because the cost, in terms of money and effort, is not zero.
I cannot fault this. I first learned assembler via a virtual machine running on a mainframe far away in the late 1970's.
Perhaps one day our young guy will realize why he needs assembler and perhaps a Prop. Who knows.
But, bottom line, MBA wise, Parallax has a problem in the long run.
Yep, the VoCore ... I hope to have one soon to do this for real.
The CHIP does not "out compete" anying. It does not exist yet...
Well, there are some "kernel hacker backers" who've had some for a couple of months; this seems at least as good as VoCore availability.
Let's see how things pan out.
Now *that* I can agree with ! I should get my CHIP in January; let's have a friendly competition to see who can get their embedded Linux board of choice to program a prop first.
In the meantime (and back to the thread topic), I'll be using a Pi to do it, and I might just get a $5 Zero to do it before the others come to fruition.
I don't think Parallax does have that problem Heater.
If P2 gets done, that carries them a long way into the future. For now, P1 has a lot of time left in it.
Yes, that is MBA talk, but it speaks to why people might do things and it does so in a business oriented way. I've worked in and with a lot of small companies to get stuff out there. Thinking of the kind I put here is a big part of all that being a success.
Now that commentary is near useless without a deeper look and some technical as well as people type analysis. That is where the value of value added is to be found. Build it and they really will come, if they find it compelling.
P2 is like that. I have no doubts, other than when it is a real chip, but we are looking really good this time.
The way I see it, that ease of learning will be worth it to enough people to not be a worry for quite some time. For every few types like the one you talked with, there will be one person looking to get stuff done, or learn and have fun. And this is a churn too. People pop in and out.
If I were king, I would be looking closely at that dynamic and maximizing it. I believe it is a constant. Not too large, but always there.
So long as it is there, a nice business is possible, and nothing more is really needed.
I put those things here for perspective. Being technical is good. Being able to express that in basic business terms is often quite useful, and it can also help understand why the best thing from a tech point of view is often not the most successful, or market dominant thing and how and why that can be just fine too.
It also can guide the tech to that sweet spot, which can vary considerably from where the technical expectations are. Less is sometimes more. Strange when it happens, but it does happen more than people will admit.
Way too much of this kind of thing gets discussed in terms framed by big business. There is a whole world out there for the taking by smaller entities looking to have a good life and enjoy doing what they do.
Where I can encourage it, I do. It is my favorite way to work. It is my favorite because it often remains possible to absolutely nail doing whatever it is and everyone involved often has the very best experiences too.
Big company work isn't like that a large fraction of the time, and I find it soul draining.
I went to the Raspberry Pi downloads area, and they have a third party RISC OS that can be loaded. Not sure if there is a SimpleIDE or a PropellerIDE available for the RISC OS though.:-)
I went to the Raspberry Pi downloads area, and they have a third party RISC OS that can be loaded. Not sure if there is a SimpleIDE or a PropellerIDE available for the RISC OS though.:-)
Ray
I wasn't thinking of using it to run SimpleIDE or PropellerIDE. Linux is fine for that. I was more thinking about people who might want to use the Pi Zero as a microcontroller on its own without interfacing it to a Propeller. They might want a lighter weight OS that boots faster than Linux.
But this is a sophisticated effort to create a brand in direct competition with Parallax. So why should I welcome their promotional buzz here without lampooning it?
I don't know why you persist in seeing the RPi as direct competition to the Propeller. My only guess is that you are just a dabbler (or even just a reader?). If you were using either platform in the way each was intended you would realize that there is a world of difference.
In my world, there is virtually no overlap between the two devices. (I've never once thought, "Golly, should I use a Propeller or a RPi for this project?" It is ALWAYS crystal clear. The day Mathematica is available for the Prop, perhaps the distinction will start to blur. Or the day I can resolve 50ns using the GPIO pins of the RPi, and with just a few lines of code, then perhaps your hand-wringing will be justified.)
But they do complement each over very well, hence the Propeller hat and its ilk.
I wasn't thinking of using it to run SimpleIDE or PropellerIDE. Linux is fine for that. I was more thinking about people who might want to use the Pi Zero as a microcontroller on its own without interfacing it to a Propeller. They might want a lighter weight OS that boots faster than Linux.
That would make sense, but SD boot is less ideal for deeply embedded systems. Connector/contact life alone is a negative there.
If they allowed SPI boot from a reasonable sized Winbond etc flash device, then simpler OS becomes more practical.
I wasn't thinking of using it to run SimpleIDE or PropellerIDE. Linux is fine for that. I was more thinking about people who might want to use the Pi Zero as a microcontroller on its own without interfacing it to a Propeller. They might want a lighter weight OS that boots faster than Linux.
That would make sense, but SD boot is less ideal for deeply embedded systems. Connector/contact life alone is a negative there.
If they allowed SPI boot from a reasonable sized Winbond etc flash device, then simpler OS becomes more practical.
Good point. I guess booting off of an SD card is less than ideal for an embedded system. Are there any other boot options for the Raspberry Pi? Can it boot from a SPI flash? I would think the Broadcom chip would support that.
Good point. I guess booting off of an SD card is less than ideal for an embedded system. Are there any other boot options for the Raspberry Pi? Can it boot from a SPI flash? I would think the Broadcom chip would support that.
Well, improving on the SD card might be workable too. Solder it in, or something robust. From there, Linux can be very seriously stripped down. Might get few second boot to ready times doing that.
There is no official light-weight real-time OS for the PI.
There is a port of FreeRTOS for the Pi, http://www.osrtos.com/rtos/freertos. I have no idea how well it works or if it is supported/maintained by anyone.
"All technical aspects matter" and "formed relationships" = win
This short video highlights key aspects of the debate we have here on the merits and reasons for the success of the Pi compared to other, arguably, technically superior products.
Unlike VHS vs Beta Max, as far as I can tell at the time the Pi came our there was no comparable product, certainly not at anything less than 5 or 10 more times the price and certainly not built and supported with that target market in mind.
It was a first of a kind.
You could say the Arduino was the "VHS" to the Pis "Beta Max", or the other way around, I'm not sure which is which.
Since then many others have jumped on the idea, Cubbie, Banna Pi, etc, etc.
Heck, we were searching around for cheap ARM dev boards and industrial computers in the months before the Pi arrived and ended up using an ISEE IGEP board at 250 dollars a pop.
There is no official light-weight real-time OS for the PI.
There is a port of FreeRTOS for the Pi, http://www.osrtos.com/rtos/freertos. I have no idea how well it works or if it is supported/maintained by anyone.
The first to market part of the argument does not apply. Not with any precision anyway.
What does apply are the cost, good enough feature set, and relationships.
Other boards are better than the Pi, but they cost more too. Other boards are bigger. Most importantly, the Pi Foundation did a great job with their product release and does the work to insure it is available in many places and that there is awareness and so forth associated with the product.
Of those arguments, I find the cost and goid enough most compelling, which is why I posted it.
Back in the day, VHS was horrible. It recorded the color signal as a divide by 2, which mangled an already marginal signal. Now, they did a subtle thing nobody ever seems to mention, and that is the player can actually play a color signal at full bandwidth and at the right frequency.
The result was home recordings were crappy. Rentals looked much better and we're on par with beta overall. The little differences there were not significant.
Strong incentives were the result. People could make crappy recordings, which were good enough, but studios could use special gear and make great recordings, which drove the rental markets.
Beta was the same for everyone, and that was a serious threat to the studios.
How features are positioned and the incentives they bring along can really matter.
Sony did the best. JVC did good enough, and the best only where necessary.
The Pi is totally good enough. So is the Zero. There are a lot of nice to have things lacking, but people can find their way on all of those too.
Any of those would bump above 5 bucks, and that bump would totally marginalize the cost impact advantage.
This stuff matters.
Secondly others have a strong incentive to carry the Pi and the Zero to make margin on those nice to have things, kits, enclosures, cables and what not.
How this all plays out can have a very serious impact on the overall success a given product may have in the marketplace.
I have been wondering about the Pi Zero. With its lack of network capability I don't have much immediate use for it.
But, with the little HDMI touch screen it becomes an embedded controller with a turbo charged GUI. Accelerated 3D graphics and all. Cheaper than an Arduino!
If the USB port worked as a "device" or "gadget" or whatever you call it. Then it would be a very cheap Prop Plug replacement. Which is kind of scary (I' not sure if the gadget driver is working there yet, probably soon.)
Comments
I thought we were done with this, having corrected all the wrong assertions, but it continues... Problem is that when you make statements that are not true we have a duty to correct them. When you make unfounded allegations as to the morals or legal behaviour of people we have duty to refute them. You are inviting a long debate by continuing to do so.
I have no problem with one expressing a differing opinion to mine as to the value proposition of this product or that. I have no problem with one pointing out technical problems with a product, if they are actually problems. But....
Never mind my comprehension of purchase orders, I am writing them all the time. There is no way a bunch of schools are going to commit to buying anything that does not exist. This is not how the Foundation works. They design and make the thing on a shoe string budget and then see if it flies. If the schools, or anyone, wants it all is good. No crowd funding, no banks, no venture capitalists. How can you say that given the very clear story told by Coley above? Amazing. Now reality has completely faded away. The Raspberry Pi has never been funded by crowd sourcing. There has never been such an offer to buy two and have a third donated to some poor kid.
I think you are getting confused with the failed One Laptop Per Child project. A totally different thing. Why on earth should a guy not have a job for frikken sake?
And your assertions of something bad going on with "legal defensive moved to put all the early promotion decisions far in the remote past." is simply slanderous. Yep. Except the Pi has delivered. Over years. At one tenth or one thousandth the cost (Compare to equipping schools with gadgets from other well know vendors). All is good. There has never been any "promotional hype". Nobody could afford it.
If it really were in direct competition with Parallax, why would anyone make Prop HATS, or get Prop tools working on Pi's ??
Sure, it comes as a Uncased Module, but far from being in direct competition with Microcontrollers, I see it as a more useful seeding interest.
PI's lack ADC/DAC's and 'Real time' on an OS is never quite the same as 'Real time' on a MCU.
It's the "reference" package. Once setup, I don't have to ever touch it. Turn it on, write code, program Prop, turn it off. All on a battery, if I want to.
I do want to correct one hype assertion. Maybe a couple.
Yes, there is hype. That hype is coming from all sorts of people, who aren't part of the foundation, who see possibilities and who are expressing excitement about them, or offering products related to them.
Interestingly, those people aren't seeing the same sorts of possibilities with other products. The combination of features, form, price, accessibility hit a resonant note with a lot of people, and that hype is of the genuine kind. (for the most part. There are always some types abusing it, but that's a minor league worry at best)
Don't forget everyone, as if you did not know, the Propeller is a wonderful thing. The Pi is a wonderful thing.
Its not A or B.
Use whatever suits the task in hand.
I'm convinced the two together can be a symphony.
I am working on that symphony....
Has anyone ever done this ? It takes more than a serial port; it also takes control of the prop reset pin (and propeller-load compiled for it, etc.). All told, the C.H.I.P. outcompetes the VoCore by many objective measures (price, speed, memory, storage, Debian), but neither has the propeller HAT that the Pi has.
I seem to be more suited for electrics than electronics where cobbling / soldering is required, so this is an important consideration for me.
However, if I run across an application where tiny and very low power are the deciding criteria, I'll keep the VoCore in mind.
Today I had one short forum post to present the idea to one young chap that if he wants to learn assembler then learning with a Propeller is a nice easy way to go with immediately useful benefits.
I failed. In this situation the hassle and expense of ordering and waiting for a Propeller board loses out to learning on a 6502 emulator or trying to hack actual ARM assembler on the Pi itself.
I hope he will be back when he realizes why he might want to be programming in assembler.
Yep, the VoCore is a MIPS processor as seen in many domestic routers.
We have programmed Props from such machines. We have the Spin compiler and loader taken care of. I'm sure it can be done from the VoCore, a similar architecture/OS, as well.
I hope to have one soon to do this for real.
The CHIP does not "out compete" anything. It does not exist yet, or at least nobody has one.
Let's see how things pan out.
I'm a big believer in asking for some dollars for all value added. Doing this avoids race to the bottom conditions, and it also centers product offerings on the more high value customers and prospects too. Doing that is where the good margins come from.
Not everyone will recognize that value, and for them, the price will be too high. No worries. They have options and should use them.
The trick in this is to understand where the line on all of that is. Add the wrong value, or ask too much for it, and a lot of money is left on the table. On the flip side, not asking enough for high value means high volume, but really thin margins too. Also money left on the table.
Getting it right means asking enough to fund the ongoing life of the company, which is new products, not just enough to pay the bills today.
That person likely values his dollars more than his time. Given a large enough time investment and or lack of success, they may well reevaluate both of those things. All up to them.
Not sure you failed at all. How people boil down, "what is worth what?" varies considerably, and sometimes a class or two at the school of hard knocks can make the bell ring, triggering a different value perception.
By the way, this dynamic is precisely why the Pi being produced by a foundation makes so much sense. Serving the masses doesn't generally pay anywhere near as well as serving high value to people who appreciate it does.
Apple takes down some 80 - 90 percent of phone profit. Samsung and a few others take down some 80 percent of the total market share for phones.
Big lesson there for everyone. Share does not matter. Margin does.
And that's in the context of goals. If the goal is to be market #1, great! Samsung is knocking it out of the park. If the goal is to be revenue #1, Apple is crushing everybody else.
"What is worth what?"
You are doing your MBA marketing speak thing. I love reading it over tea in the morning
It's all "dollars" and "value added" etc.
None of that was my concern at the time. I'm encountering a young guy who expresses a desire to learn assembler. For whatever reason I would like to help. I just think it's a fun interesting thing to be able to do that I would like to share with others. I have nothing to gain by suggesting Propeller or ARM or Intel or MIPs or whatever. I only have some irrational desire to be helpful. Irrational in that I have no gain to be made by helping, in the capitalist, profit seeking, sense.
However, the Prop and PASM is a joy to use and the simplest assembler I have ever used. So that is my suggestion.
Basically shot down because the cost, in terms of money and effort, is not zero.
I cannot fault this. I first learned assembler via a virtual machine running on a mainframe far away in the late 1970's.
Perhaps one day our young guy will realize why he needs assembler and perhaps a Prop. Who knows.
But, bottom line, MBA wise, Parallax has a problem in the long run.
In the meantime (and back to the thread topic), I'll be using a Pi to do it, and I might just get a $5 Zero to do it before the others come to fruition.
I'm all up for the friendly competition
If P2 gets done, that carries them a long way into the future. For now, P1 has a lot of time left in it.
Yes, that is MBA talk, but it speaks to why people might do things and it does so in a business oriented way. I've worked in and with a lot of small companies to get stuff out there. Thinking of the kind I put here is a big part of all that being a success.
Now that commentary is near useless without a deeper look and some technical as well as people type analysis. That is where the value of value added is to be found. Build it and they really will come, if they find it compelling.
P2 is like that. I have no doubts, other than when it is a real chip, but we are looking really good this time.
The way I see it, that ease of learning will be worth it to enough people to not be a worry for quite some time. For every few types like the one you talked with, there will be one person looking to get stuff done, or learn and have fun. And this is a churn too. People pop in and out.
If I were king, I would be looking closely at that dynamic and maximizing it. I believe it is a constant. Not too large, but always there.
So long as it is there, a nice business is possible, and nothing more is really needed.
I put those things here for perspective. Being technical is good. Being able to express that in basic business terms is often quite useful, and it can also help understand why the best thing from a tech point of view is often not the most successful, or market dominant thing and how and why that can be just fine too.
It also can guide the tech to that sweet spot, which can vary considerably from where the technical expectations are. Less is sometimes more. Strange when it happens, but it does happen more than people will admit.
Way too much of this kind of thing gets discussed in terms framed by big business. There is a whole world out there for the taking by smaller entities looking to have a good life and enjoy doing what they do.
Where I can encourage it, I do. It is my favorite way to work. It is my favorite because it often remains possible to absolutely nail doing whatever it is and everyone involved often has the very best experiences too.
Big company work isn't like that a large fraction of the time, and I find it soul draining.
All boils down to what is worth what?
To me, it seems small enough and cheap enough to consider a component. Strip down the OS, make it specific purpose, drop it in and go.
It's sort of like a Linux Propeller in that way.
People did that with the Protoboard too. Get 5 of them, and just build things. Great fun, not too expensive.
Ray
I don't know why you persist in seeing the RPi as direct competition to the Propeller. My only guess is that you are just a dabbler (or even just a reader?). If you were using either platform in the way each was intended you would realize that there is a world of difference.
In my world, there is virtually no overlap between the two devices. (I've never once thought, "Golly, should I use a Propeller or a RPi for this project?" It is ALWAYS crystal clear. The day Mathematica is available for the Prop, perhaps the distinction will start to blur. Or the day I can resolve 50ns using the GPIO pins of the RPi, and with just a few lines of code, then perhaps your hand-wringing will be justified.)
But they do complement each over very well, hence the Propeller hat and its ilk.
Really, Loopy, chill out!
That would make sense, but SD boot is less ideal for deeply embedded systems. Connector/contact life alone is a negative there.
If they allowed SPI boot from a reasonable sized Winbond etc flash device, then simpler OS becomes more practical.
Looks like there are some options. There are trade-offs, but maybe something workable can be done.
Seems to still be 'in flux'... ie talked about, but not done yet.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=98&t=108585
I guess an alternative approach is to find a SO8 or smaller flash memory, or even a small MCU, that can appear to be a SD card to the Rasp-pi ?
http://www.dotmana.com/weblog/2015/08/microsd-card-reflow-quick-and-dirty-pcb-with-kicad/
& there is a picture of SD cards supplied in trays, which suggests they are intended for this use ...?
There is a port of FreeRTOS for the Pi, http://www.osrtos.com/rtos/freertos. I have no idea how well it works or if it is supported/maintained by anyone.
Or what about ChibiOS http://www.stevebate.net/chibios-rpi/GettingStarted.html
Perhaps there are others.
A lot of people seem to me interested in programming to the "bare-metal" on the Pi, there is a whole forum section dedicated to it.
"All technical aspects matter" and "formed relationships" = win
This short video highlights key aspects of the debate we have here on the merits and reasons for the success of the Pi compared to other, arguably, technically superior products.
"often just good enough wins"
I'm sure it has merit but in this case...
Unlike VHS vs Beta Max, as far as I can tell at the time the Pi came our there was no comparable product, certainly not at anything less than 5 or 10 more times the price and certainly not built and supported with that target market in mind.
It was a first of a kind.
You could say the Arduino was the "VHS" to the Pis "Beta Max", or the other way around, I'm not sure which is which.
Since then many others have jumped on the idea, Cubbie, Banna Pi, etc, etc.
Heck, we were searching around for cheap ARM dev boards and industrial computers in the months before the Pi arrived and ended up using an ISEE IGEP board at 250 dollars a pop.
Actually, these alternative OSes just might make better sense for the Pi Zero than Linux. The HDMI, keyboard, and mouse can just be ignored.
The first to market part of the argument does not apply. Not with any precision anyway.
What does apply are the cost, good enough feature set, and relationships.
Other boards are better than the Pi, but they cost more too. Other boards are bigger. Most importantly, the Pi Foundation did a great job with their product release and does the work to insure it is available in many places and that there is awareness and so forth associated with the product.
Of those arguments, I find the cost and goid enough most compelling, which is why I posted it.
Back in the day, VHS was horrible. It recorded the color signal as a divide by 2, which mangled an already marginal signal. Now, they did a subtle thing nobody ever seems to mention, and that is the player can actually play a color signal at full bandwidth and at the right frequency.
The result was home recordings were crappy. Rentals looked much better and we're on par with beta overall. The little differences there were not significant.
Strong incentives were the result. People could make crappy recordings, which were good enough, but studios could use special gear and make great recordings, which drove the rental markets.
Beta was the same for everyone, and that was a serious threat to the studios.
How features are positioned and the incentives they bring along can really matter.
Sony did the best. JVC did good enough, and the best only where necessary.
The Pi is totally good enough. So is the Zero. There are a lot of nice to have things lacking, but people can find their way on all of those too.
Any of those would bump above 5 bucks, and that bump would totally marginalize the cost impact advantage.
This stuff matters.
Secondly others have a strong incentive to carry the Pi and the Zero to make margin on those nice to have things, kits, enclosures, cables and what not.
How this all plays out can have a very serious impact on the overall success a given product may have in the marketplace.
That is the core relevance to Beta VHS.
But, with the little HDMI touch screen it becomes an embedded controller with a turbo charged GUI. Accelerated 3D graphics and all. Cheaper than an Arduino!
If the USB port worked as a "device" or "gadget" or whatever you call it. Then it would be a very cheap Prop Plug replacement. Which is kind of scary (I' not sure if the gadget driver is working there yet, probably soon.)