Their excuse definitely smells like bullshit. It just seems they want to do the Apple thing of making sure they get the money for the upgrade, plus a premium. Except even Apple has a technical reason they don't allow upgrades, which Raspberry Pi doesn't.

They already have authorized resellers, who they link to on their website. This problem would only come from unauthorized resellers, who would not qualify for warranty service. It might not help software support requests, but I don’t know how much support they offer for software since I don’t think they’re supplied with any. Anything hardware they should be asking for a receipt from an authorized reseller, and if the customer can’t provide it then it’s not covered by the warranty. And even if the customer can provide a receipt from an authorized reseller in their name, if it comes in for repair and has the wrong RAM then it’s not a warranty repair anyway (although I’m guessing for something this inexpensive they don’t repair individual units, they probably just send a replacement, so the counterfeit parts might not get noticed).

From a consumer freedom standpoint this is shitty. And it does allow them to sell an enthusiast model at a premium without competing with an after market modder.

But two things can be true. I don't think it's entirely unreasonable for the company to want to protect the integrity of the brand if unreliable after market sellers start releasing bad product indistinguishable from your own with your logo slapped on it.

Even if you have authorized resellers entrusted with doing the upgrades and audited for quality, if you leave the door open, there will be unauthorized mods on the market too. It does hurt not only Raspberry Pi, but the entire resell market if you can't trust the product to have their expected standard of quality. It still sucks, but I at least get the justification.

A few years back, I worked in an assembly plant for a car company. One time when I was doing a quality containment, I found out that something like 30-50 cars were found to have a very slightly misaligned roof piece when it was welded, and it causes a slight, but visible warp in the roof. It was otherwise fine. Still water proof, still structurally sound, just a cosmetic defect. They were all quarantined to be stripped of any easily removable components and then the remaining parts and body would be scrapped.

I asked why? Even if they didn't want to put them out to dealers with a visible defect, they were still safe and functional. They could still offer them to employees for sale at a discount and make far more back for them than its value as scrap. The answer was that it could hurt the value of the brand as a whole if low quality cars were put on the market, even if only for resale. It was worth the loss of these 30+ cars to maintain a consumer's high expectation of quality.

I still think it may have been better to allow employees an opportunity to get a new vehicle at a great price with only a cosmetic defect. But I do get the competing concern there. You do want things you buy from a big company to have reliable quality.

I knew it was happening the second they mentioned "IPO". Company was cooked.

Are there any companies that make comparable products? I've been thinking of making a simple and small and low power media computer and I'd rather it not be a raspberry pi anymore

There's a blob in there you will never own

First time?

/j

Srs, I don’t think I’ve ever owned a consumer device that, as the other person points out, didn’t have blobs inside from the factory. Sure, ive manually replaced the BIOS with Libreboot and switched to blobless (software) WiFi chips, but then what about the EC blobs? The keyboard and mouse? If being fully FOSS predicates ownership, I don’t think any of us own our devices

yep and I/O isn't terrible to add. A CP2112 USB <--> I2C module is like $5 on amazon (and way less on AliExpress) and gets you an I2C port and a few GPIO all controllable through Python or libusb. The FT232H or CH347 modules are similar and offer SPI as well.

I mean… aren’t hackers the target audience for Raspberry Pis?

They used to be. But for the last few years it has looked less and less like that.

Yeah, it sure is. It's a hobbyist product and they took away my ability to upgrade it. After 14 years of buying these boards, they decided now, during a global RAM shortage, to tighten the leash...

I can solder new RAM into my MacBook or Nvidia GPU, but Raspberry Pi is the first to implement physical locks preventing RAM upgrades. What a fucking joke.

I feel like raspberry has been backstabbing everyone for a while.

I'm now trying to imagine what series of events would lead to you being shot because of subpar soldering skills.

enshitification always makes sense. Hear me out.

1. Company needs to make more money

Desoldering RAM off a production PCB is something no hobbyist is going to bother with

Ever heard of "repair" when no original spare parts are available?

What's the problem with a company doing what they want with hardware they purchased and own?

There are a lot of them but most suffer from chinese hardware support problem (e.g. they are unsopported beyond what did they ship with softwarewise, provide close to zero documentation, and have dozens models sold at any one time), rpi themselves aren't all that libre and always shipped with blobs and had bullshit excuses about it. Anyway rp2350 is the best thing that raspberry produces right now.