IMO that's more like using the phone or tablet as a better user interface to an embedded product. Which is totally a good thing as far as I can see, especially

IMO that's more like using the phone or tablet as a better user interface to an embedded product. Which is totally a good thing as far as I can see, especially if it can add more features to the pedal without the developer having to spend precious BOM on the the screen and input keys. I would think a better analogy is the Raspberry Pi being put into all kinds of products. Nobody is respinning or modifying the RPis - they're being used as a COTS CPU for a larger project.