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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

Yeah. Brand-wise, I would rather see the Raspberry Pi shop like a kind of bazaar where you find everything in all sorts of places rather than a very tidy and clean place where everything is in order. The "everything should look like what Apple does" is really tiring and generic these days.

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Perhaps their thinking is that you can already find the Pi in bazaar kind of shops full of electronics parts and really aimed at tinkerers.

This shop could be more for luring new users and making it look simple for a first approach.

I think you are exactly right. The customers who want the bazaar with lots of parts are already their customer and will continue to be their customer regardless of a brick and mortar store. This is trying to attract a new customer.

Let's be clear on this: the store is not located in Cambridge because there is a particularly large untapped market there. It is located in Cambridge because of the Pi's ties to the city. Maybe the huge success of the device means that there is active pressure on the RPi folks to diversify or to create a physical manifestation of the brand. Maybe a bricks and mortar store is just a vain indulgence, though I'd hope not.

The RPi has always been about the "technically sweet", not about maximum penetration into new markets.

Context for the use of "technically sweet":

DR. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER: "If the development by the enemy as well as by us of thermonuclear weapons could have been averted, I think we would be in a somewhat safer world today than we are...I do not think we want to argue technical questions here, and I do not think it is very meaningful for me to speculate as to how we would have responded had the technical picture at that time been more as it was later. However, it is my judgment in these things that when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb. I do not think anybody opposed making it; there were some debates about what to do with it after it was made. I cannot very well imagine if we had known in late 1949 what we got to know by early 1951 that the tone of our report would have been the same."

Setting aside the association of this phrase with the development of terrifying weapons, I think it is apt for the Raspberry Pi. The has lowered the barrier for entry to so many projects that you can just go ahead and make things rather than worrying about whether the utility of the thing is worth its cost or risk. Certainly Pi projects seem to be proliferating in my house...

The "RPi is for nerds" shtick is specifically what they're probably trying to get rid of with that store. Looking approachable is a pretty key component of that.

Doesn't really look like an Apple Store either, unless wood and white is now reserved for Apple...

> Looking approachable is a pretty key component of that.

Agreed, the other key component though is actually making their machine and software/hardware approachable, smooth, performant and reliable. Which they haven't really put any effort in to since they started.

I really wanted the dream of an affordable computer for kids to be a reality but at the end of the day when the $35 just isn't as performant as a budget tablet around the same price then kids are going to just end up with tablets and never have the opportunity to crack the machine open.

If the product doesn't live up to the sales pitch of the store, then the product is just going to get returned.

> I really wanted the dream of an affordable computer for kids to be a reality but at the end of the day when the $35 just isn't as performant as a budget tablet around the same price then kids are going to just end up with tablets and never have the opportunity to crack the machine open.

For the children that love to tinker, $€35 will probably not be an obstacle. Tablets and RPis appeal to quite different audiences.

Tinkering is not the same as consuming media/games. The kids who play with tablets and the kids who tinker with pis are completely different demographics( or the same person at different times). While I agree that the rpi leaves a lot to be desired( and other boards have left it in the dust hardware-wise) it is still the most accessible board out there and to say that they haven't improved on that is false( especially with software).

I totally get that I just think there is a lot of value to the tinkering being possible on the device they use for everything else.

How many kids got a PC to play games on but while bored found QBasic and Gorillas.bas.

How many kids on MySpace or NeoPets learnt HTML/CSS as a way to customize their profiles.

This all used to be a reality when kids grew up using a general purpose computing platform, now the choices are a Tablet that works as a general purpose platform you can't tinker with or a board you can only tinker on but not use as a computer.

I agree. But a tablet is only possible because you can't tinker with it( hardware limitations, how would you fit connectors etc in it?). The software side of things could be better but you also have to keep in mind that an RPi makes both hardware and software tinkering on a very cheap package. Tinkering with software on an old PC was possible but tinkering with hardware would risk a fairly expensive machine.

If they fixed power (stop using USB micro B, add a power switch header) and SD card stuff (let me boot from USB), I would be so much happier with my pis. But as it stands they are really messy to work with.

Using USB micro B lowers the BOM while making the device accessible in international markets (regardless of what your local power is, everyone has USB power adapters). Personally, I'd like to USB-C, but USB-C headers are still hella expensive.

That being said, you can power a Pi by attaching the right cables to the GPIO headers:

https://www.adafruit.com/product/954 https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruits-raspberry-pi-lesson-5-u...

Booting from USB required a hardware change, and appears to be available in the latest versions of the Pi:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...

(Admittedly, it looks like you need a microSD card to boot the Pi so you can reconfigure it this way.)

Wow I truly did not know you could simply boot from USB on the 3+, thanks for that.

    unless wood and white is now 
    reserved for Apple...

I wouldn't put it past them to try...

The RPi is for nerds, so long as we class engineers, scientists, makers and so on as nerds.

The non-nerdy masses aren’t interested, they’re happily consuming content on iOS or Android, or doing work on Windows/MacOS

> The "RPi is for nerds" shtick is specifically what they're probably trying to get rid of with that store.

Companies should be very careful not to alienate their core audience that made them big. In the past, lots of companies in their plans to widen their audiences made this mistake.

I fail to see how having a clean looking store alienates anyone. If it does, these people should look back at their priorities in life.

A "clean look" means not having the inventory, not having a vast selection on the shelves. It means selling packages, clean boxes of parts, rather than individual bit. I wouldn't walk into a "clean look" to replace a broken connector or motor accessory. And it isn't just because I don't think they will have the part. I don't want to be upsold the newest model. I don't want to be told my device is out of date. I wouldn't walk into the apple store asking for a new headphone jack.

> I fail to see how having a clean looking store alienates anyone.

I do not claim that. But it is a strong sign of the direction that the Raspberry Pi Foundation might want to target in the future. And this direction has a potential to alienate the core audience.

That's basically being angry at what they might do, which is a very premature kneejerk reaction. If they end up alienating them, they'll stop following. I still fail to see how it's really a problem.

Us "nerds" are just never happy.

Isn't the primary users of RPi essentially nerds though? The average person isn't the type to hack one into a garage door to open via app or rig up a pi-hole to filter their smart TV, that's the domain of the stereotypical hacker nerd. I can see the appeal of widening the net to turn more potential nerds to the dark side, but if you just don't have any interest into this stuff to begin with than a shiny store isn't going to change that.

If I recall correctly, the folks who made RPi have serious nostalgia for the BBC Micro. So even if the target demo is nerdy kids, they need to interface with less-than-nerdy parents and teachers who make buying decisions for those kids.

Element14 isn't exactly the most friendly website for a lay person...

They should have area for group meeting area to host regular meetup / learning tutorial sessions for hobbyist and students.

Also a lab/work bench where anyone can plug and play different components together and experiments, measure voltage, signals with an USB oscilloscopes (make with PI? ).

Volunteers can come in regularly to demo, share info, organizer classes.

Instead of just shelf full of the products - it should also have area where it run a lot of the interesting projects found on the web AI object recognition with YOLO2|3, PI self driving car, etc

Why should they? This is trying to reach new people, not cater to existing hackers in the same way. You could always just visit a hackerspace. Having this in a high street locations would be extremely expensive and waste of resources.

What about maybe getting groups of school kids in? I'm sure plenty would have their interest piqued and end up making a purchase (or their parents, depending on age)

Even in that context I think a learning space would be good. Apple runs classes in their Apple Stores, and I know a good number of (typically older) people who learned to use their iPad that way. Something similar for the Pi could bring in a new audience, not cater to existing hackers.

Stuff on the high street seems more likely to reach new people than stuff in a hackerspace, which are a bit intimidating if you don't know anything about hackerspaces.

Offering taster classes and workshops to get people interested in the product could be a great use of the space.

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