Raspberry Pi prepares for London listing | Hacker News Reader

Raspberry Pi prepares for London listing

ft.com

81 pointsdenotational29 comments

Discussion about the announcement yesterday at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40366062

Looks like this was picked out of the resubmit queue: I originally posted this before the other post, not much to talk about now!

The magic behind HN never ceases to surprise and amaze us :)

An ad supported freemium Raspberry Pi running pi-hole would really sum up the last decade in tech.

Then for bonus points everybody uses it to go to ad-supported websites where they complain about their lack of privacy.

Nice way for the founders to get an exit whilst brand awareness is still up there. It's a hardware firm so I'm uncertain how bad they can possibly transform the products - SAAS going public usually causes the product to suffer significantly.

Most likely everything will be moved to China and UK will only have bare bones operations and some token customer service.

Maybe they'll even drop R&D and just sell rebranded Chinese boards as RPi.

https://archive.ph/5SwVs

I think the Raspberry Pi foundation doesn’t have a very compelling runway to launch their products into many areas. Someone, contradict my thinking.

Maybe I will finally get my Pi 4.

There is a heap of Raspberry Pi 4 inventory in the channel. https://rpilocator.com/

That's such a a shame. It was a cool product with a decent community around it. Now the enshittification begins and they'll be squeezing for every pound they can get. RIP Raspberry Pi.

> enshittification

Can you elaborate on what you think will happen? It seems difficult to screw up the idea of "selling small computers".

They'll figure out a way to make a subscription service for it.

Yes, they'll make like Arduino and launch the Raspberry Pi Cloud.

Press 1 for the latest security updates with Raspbian Pro. Only $5/month!

Press 2 to be acquired by private equity, layoff 95% of employees, and pause future development.

Press 3 to release a $3999 RPi server cluster of 16 nodes with AI and cloud features that can be enabled by subscription features.

Press 4 for RPi 6 to cost only $499. Hurry, supplies are limited and the waiting list is filling up fast!

Press 5 to change the licensing to proprietary for some components.

Press 6 to remove the GPIO header.

It's already happening. The Pi 5 came out four years after the Pi 4 and is between 50% and 250% faster, depending on the workload. However, it also has a base price almost twice as high as the Pi 4, moving from $35 to $60. It also consumes much more power, peaking at 12 watts compared to the Pi 4's 8 watts. The Zero 2 W is probably the last good product they'll ever release.

I don't understand this compliant at all. The company still manufactures and sells the Pi 1, 3, and 4, in several variations.

What did they take away from the world by making a more powerful model which uses, uh, 12 entire watts? 50% more power, 50-250% more compute. Suits me.

You don't understand dissatisfaction at a computer company going four years with zero improvement in cost to performance ratio?

Intentionally gimp it: if you want M2, that will be $100 more, 4K is version-locked but you can buy the unlock code for only $49. It default ships with an OS that contains ads, but you can "unlock" that too, for only $60, but hurry this is a one-time price, it's sure to go back up to $100 any day now. Gee, for some reason (after the security update), there's this "bug" where SD card speeds cap out at a max of 12Mbps (USB 2.0) , the engineers are working on a fix, but in the mean time you can get around it because the rPi-branded SD cards are running at the full 3.0 speed, better be safe than sorry.

Sure. Some ideas:

Prices will go up. They will split out basic features into 'premium' models. They will no longer sell cheaper models entirely. They will find some way to shoehorn a subscription service since that's what every investor wants now. RPI Os will be littered with 'partnerships' and they'll find a way to make it difficult or unpleasant to use anything else to avoid them. They'll rush to do yearly releases instead of focusing on quality and support. I wouldn't be surprised if they break their guarantee to keep manufacturing products until a certain date.

Raspberry Pi is good not because it has superior or cheaper hardware, but because it has a community and support. If I have a problem with an RPi (hardware or software) it's _so_ much easier to work out how to fix it than some random chinese SBC. The enshittification will probably happen around the community; either intentionally (e.g. paid subscription to the forums) or unintentionally (bad decisions mean people leave the community)

Oh, not to me. Capital finds its ways. Maybe not now, but certainly in the future.

There’s a really douchebag move here about them being able to fulfill LSE listing requirements but not fulfill supply side requirements to their own damn customers.

But hey, maybe a sudden cash injection post-IPO will help them actually sell their products.

Of course, then they’ll have the problem of raising their prices, and people will eventually say, you know what, no thanks, and just use a competitor SBC.

You already basically can’t buy from them at a price that makes sense, or at all.

And the really cool thing is their website lists a bunch of legacy products that no partner sells anymore so you get the great experience of trying to figure out what the hell you can buy from them in the first place.

> not fulfill supply side requirements to their own damn customers

It's been easy to find a Pi in stock for months now. https://rpilocator.com

Why do you think that site exists in the first place?

Because it used to be difficult to find a Pi in stock.

But now it isn’t.

Maybe it’s news to you, but after years of shortages, reputation doesn’t change in months.

When was the last time you tried to buy one? rpilocator.com shows wide general availability, and my local MicroCenter has had a variety of models available for months.

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