It took about a year for the Raspberry Pi foundation to sell the first million of its mini-computers. Now, less than two years after the first device rolled off the production lines, 2 million Raspberry Pi devices have been sold.
The Raspberry Pi was designed to be a low cost, low-power computer that could run open source software and which could be used in educational settings to teach kids about computers and programming.
It’s also proven popular with hobbyists building robots, game consoles, wearable devices, DIY tablets and laptops, servers, home entertainment systems, and many other devices. It’s not the most powerful little PC, but at $35, it’s priced to move.
Here’s a roundup of tech news from around the web.
- 2 million Raspberry Pis sold
On the one hand, it’ll be nice when we see new models with faster processors and more powerful graphics. On the other hand, part of what’s remarkable about the project is that the Raspberry Pi team has shown that bigger isn’t always better — sometimes accessible and good enough are the keys to success. [Raspberry Pi] - Oppo and CyanogenMod are rumored to be developing a new phone
The Oppo N1 Limited Edition will already be one of the first smartphones to ship with CyanogenMod pre-loaded. But there’s a rumor going around that CyanogenMod will build its own phone soon — and now a prominent Oppo VP has resigned, possibly to start a new company/subsidiary that will build that phone? [Engadget] - Google Hangouts gets unofficial Google Voice integration
Google Hangouts will eventually be Google’s one-stop shop for communications on Android devices. Until then, CyanogenMod developer Koushik Dutta has provided his own solution for bringing Hangouts and Google Voice together. [+Koush] - Meizu MX3 smartphone with 128GB of storage available… in China only
I bet if more phones came with this much storage, there’d be fewer complaints about the lack of microSD cards in many recent Android handsets. [Engadget] - Jynxbox M1 Pure Linux is an ARM-powered TV box with XBMC
This isn’t the first Linux-based, ARM-powered XBMC box. But the $90 JynxBox M1 is still a member of a rather rare species. It has 2GB of RAM, a microSDHC card for storage, an IR port, Ethernet and WiFi, and a few USB ports, among other things. [CNX Software] - Apple releases iOS 7.1 beta, fixes some bugs
Don’t expect any major new features so soon after the launch of iOS 7. But this update should fix some networking bugs, among other things. [FSM] - Sling launches a Roku channel and PlayOn launches PlayCast for streaming to Roku, Chromecast
Apparently today’s a good day to launch apps that let you stream content from a mobile device to a TV using a Roku. [TechCrunch and PlayCast] - Nexus 10 tablet leaked… or hoaxed Meanwhile, Tesco product page suggests imminent launch
Last year Google introduced 7 and 10 inch Nexus tablets. This year we’ve only seen a new 7 inch model so far. Either the company’s giving up on the 10 inch space, or a new model is in the works… and there may or may not be some leaks that may or may not help us figure out what to expect. [reddit and Pocket Lint]
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Just never got the point of the Pi. Marketed as an open device for tinkering but the primary computing power (hint: it ain’t the puny little ARM core) is entirely closed.
It sits in an awkward middle ground between microcontrollers and more capable and not too much more expensive devel boards. Can’t argue with their marketing dept though, 2M units is a lot more than I would have guessed.
It’s still the cheapest ‘above arduino’ board on the market isn’t it ? the videocore chip they’re piggy backing was probably the only chip they could get at low prices at the time. It’s open enough for what they wanted to do, give high level languages for kids / amateurs to play with. I too would like a simpler board, without the cpu being a sidecar on a big closed gpu.
The close ties the Raspberry Pi Foundation has with Broadcom undoubtedly helped with the pricing of the BCM2835 SoC that the Pi is based around.
I never really knew what’s their relationship. Is Eben Upton an actual employee of BCM ?
Right now I really wish they’d release a rpi2 with a more open SoC, non usb driven network, simpler layout, slightly better specs, but AFAIK they said they wouldn’t quite a few time. Having such a great (euphemism) success might give them some momentum to get other SoC from BCM, it’s good for their image too.
Yes, Eben works for Broadcom. I’m buying a quad-core CuBox-i with the intention of replacing my Pi with it. It looks better than anything else I’ve seen. They will hopefully be out in late November.
I’ve been sniping at it too, love the form factor. Which one did you buy, Single or Dual ?
Quad.
Oh, that’s quite a step above rpi price point, but this will be a very nice little cube.