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Let's be clear on this: the store is not located in Cambridge because there is a particularly large untapped market there. It is located in Cambridge because of

by theoh 8y ago

Let's be clear on this: the store is not located in Cambridge because there is a particularly large untapped market there. It is located in Cambridge because of the Pi's ties to the city. Maybe the huge success of the device means that there is active pressure on the RPi folks to diversify or to create a physical manifestation of the brand. Maybe a bricks and mortar store is just a vain indulgence, though I'd hope not. The RPi has always been about the "technically sweet", not about maximum penetration into new markets.

matthewmcg 8y ago
Context for the use of "technically sweet": DR. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER: "If the development by the enemy as well as by us of thermonuclear weapons could have been averted, I think we would be in a somewhat safer world today than we are...I do not think we want to argue technical questions here, and I do not think it is very meaningful for me to speculate as to how we would have responded had the technical picture at that time been more as it was later. However, it is my judgment in these things that when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb. I do not think anybody opposed making it; there were some debates about what to do with it after it was made. I cannot very well imagine if we had known in late 1949 what we got to know by early 1951 that the tone of our report would have been the same." Setting aside the association of this phrase with the development of terrifying weapons, I think it is apt for the Raspberry Pi. The has lowered the barrier for entry to so many projects that you can just go ahead and make things rather than worrying about whether the utility of the thing is worth its cost or risk. Certainly Pi projects seem to be proliferating in my house...

by theoh 8y ago

matthewmcg 8y ago

Context for the use of "technically sweet": DR. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER: "If the development by the enemy as well as by us of thermonuclear weapons could have been averted, I think we would be in a somewhat safer world today than we are...I do not think we want to argue technical questions here, and I do not think it is very meaningful for me to speculate as to how we would have responded had the technical picture at that time been more as it was later. However, it is my judgment in these things that when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb. I do not think anybody opposed making it; there were some debates about what to do with it after it was made. I cannot very well imagine if we had known in late 1949 what we got to know by early 1951 that the tone of our report would have been the same." Setting aside the association of this phrase with the development of terrifying weapons, I think it is apt for the Raspberry Pi. The has lowered the barrier for entry to so many projects that you can just go ahead and make things rather than worrying about whether the utility of the thing is worth its cost or risk. Certainly Pi projects seem to be proliferating in my house...