I think if they had invested in a beginner-friendly toolchain for the PRU (maybe something like an Arduino core with a virtual serial port to pass data back and

I think if they had invested in a beginner-friendly toolchain for the PRU (maybe something like an Arduino core with a virtual serial port to pass data back and forth without forcing people to implement ring buffers in shared memory), they could've carved out a much larger niche for the Beaglebone. Nowadays, there are fast hobbyist-accessible microcontrollers with USB or wifi support that can fill a lot of the same niches, so I think they sorta missed the boat.