Janky long term kernel driver support. Essentially you get a minimally functional SBC OS, and then have to buy another SBC a year later as the kernel developer

Janky long term kernel driver support. Essentially you get a minimally functional SBC OS, and then have to buy another SBC a year later as the kernel developers find something more interesting to work on. The Pi are not just the hardware, but foundation and community maintained OS too. A functional Pi GPU took herculean effort (hardware codecs etc.), and years of dedicated people trying to get mystery binary-blobs to work. I think the beagleboard are pretty good too, but have nowhere near the user-base of the pi. Many people are now upcycling low-power micro PC thin clients, as they refuse to get price gouged for a pi4.