>> So the RPi foundation deliver the first mass-market hackable board
I take issue with this.
They certainly managed to capture people's interest but they were not the first and they absolutely still have black boxes on their devices. And no, there were many previous devices available through normal online retail channels.
The 'Plug Computing' phenomenon from a few years previously, while not on the same scale, did some of this.
And did you even read the article linked? At no point does the author say their entire work is lipstick on a pig, just that some of the way the Pi 3 works may class that way.
Open(ish) embedded computing existed before the Pi, they did good work taking it more mainstream, but please don't credit them with everything.
I remember hearing about the Beagleboard for years before the Pi, along with the Plug machines and Gumstix (if I'm remembering correctly; never really dug into those at all). I think the RPi's greatest innovations have been their educational goals and (crucially) the price point. I think that most of the boards before it were marketed as hacker/dev boards and priced accordingly, and they were correspondingly more niche products.
It certainly wasn't the first hackable SBC, but I think adding "mass-market" into the claim makes it defensible. There's a parallel to the Arduino, in my mind. It wasn't the first microcontroller dev board, but it was the one that made that microcontrollers look cool to outsiders.
I take issue with this.
They certainly managed to capture people's interest but they were not the first and they absolutely still have black boxes on their devices. And no, there were many previous devices available through normal online retail channels.
The 'Plug Computing' phenomenon from a few years previously, while not on the same scale, did some of this.
And did you even read the article linked? At no point does the author say their entire work is lipstick on a pig, just that some of the way the Pi 3 works may class that way.
Open(ish) embedded computing existed before the Pi, they did good work taking it more mainstream, but please don't credit them with everything.