11 ms·

It's crazy how Raspberry Pi & Apple prices have moved in converging direction. Pi 5 8GB is $200 MacBook Neo 8GB is $600 (probably some edu discount available)

It's crazy how Raspberry Pi & Apple prices have moved in converging direction. Pi 5 8GB is $200 MacBook Neo 8GB is $600 (probably some edu discount available) Sure 3x the price, but it comes with - 256GB SSD, battery, display, keyboard, trackpad.. So the Pi has slowly become too expensive for weird one-off projects and also price competitive with a cheap Mac by the time you add all the stuff you need to use it as a cheap computer. If Apple ever got around to a headless "Mac Micro", below the Mini, which had the same specs as the Neo in desktop form it would be even more stark. They could easily ship that for $400 (mini is $300 cheaper than cheapest M-series MacBook with same ram/ssd). They might never do this as it's enough computer for most people they'd lose revenue from those otherwise spending far more at the Apple Store.

Aurornis 4mo ago
8GB of LPDDR memory is around $100 in volume. That leaves $100 for everything else on the Pi, including the hardware, building it, transporting it, and retailer margin. That leaves $500 for everything else on the MacBook Neo. That's why you can get so much more from the MacBook Neo. There's 5X as much budget for everything other than RAM.
- yftsui 4mo ago
  Assume the numbers are correct, Pi spent $100 for a PCB with some components; Neo's hardware includes keyboard, 13 inch display, aluminum chassis, battery, charger. You remove the costs of the above from that $500.
- rerdavies 4mo ago
  I'm wondering how "everything just costs twice for exactly the same thing because it's Apple" factors into the equation.
bigyabai 4mo ago
I dunno, it's not unexpected. Smartphone hardware has been cheaper, more proliferate and faster than Raspberry Pis for a while. The Pi Foundation finds a market by supporting Linux, documenting GPIO and Arduino/hat ecosystems, and advocating for a hackier, server-like approach with the cheap hardware. Game consoles, smartphones and consumer laptops are often powerful, but priced taking the customer's service revenue into account. My Raspberry Pi is definitely outclassed by a few of my old phones and laptops. But it's also super pleasant to host services on, so it's my go-to SBC.
- LtWorf 4mo ago
  Phones don't have any I/O and android is a pain in the ass to experiment with. Plus by default it will do things like powersave.
  - NoGravitas 4mo ago
    If I could install PostmarketOS (and a close-to-mainline kernel?) on one of my old smartphones, I'd rather use that for my cyberdeck project than a Pi. I'm not prepared to do a pmos bring-up on an unsupported phone, though.
    - LtWorf 4mo ago
      Good luck with that, I think the chance that your phone is supported and works are very slim unless you bought it on purpose for that.
zerobees 4mo ago
Having had a subscription to Hack-a-Day for a long time, I firmly believe that the vast majority of "weird one-off" Raspberry Pi projects don't actually need anything as capable as a Raspberry Pi SBC. It's just a matter of brand recognition and familiarity. If it gets too expensive, I suspect that more users will migrate to microcontrollers than to gutted notebooks. You don't even need to learn anything new, I'm sure you can ask Claude to vibe code something on RP2350 nowadays and there's an 80% chance it will work.
- peterburkimsher 4mo ago
  Another Hackaday reader here. I think that the RPi shines in projects where GPIO are needed, yet the developer needs a full Linux OS (usually to run Python). I agree that vibe coding microcontrollers will increase the use of embedded systems instead of RPi devices. Seems like a good move for them to have built the RPi Pico.
  - dannyw 4mo ago
    There’s something really fun about writing your own microcontroller code as a software engineer that hasn’t worked with embedded before. At least for me. Before you just vibe code, consider if it piques your interest. You might just enjoy learning, playing, and building with something new. When you get stuck, hand it over to AI.
- barnas2 4mo ago
  I built a portable meshtastic terminal using Claude and a Pico 2. It's written 100% of the code in MicroPython and it works great. It even wrote the driver for the E-ink screen I'm using. I built a jig to hold a webcam and the e-ink screen, then had Claude write a script/MCP that takes a photo and crops just the screen out. Then I asked it to figure out a driver, and after a 20 minute loop of taking photos and updating it's driver, it was done.
- HerbManic 4mo ago
  A lot of things wouldn't even need a RP2350. The original Arduino alone was pretty slick for a lot of cool small scale projects.
roody15 4mo ago
Education price for schools is 499$ for the Neo. Have to agree no longer sure the pi makes much sense at this price point.
- LtWorf 4mo ago
  Except that a rpi is a device made for learning things and a Neo is a device made to be a door to a shop.
  - roody15 4mo ago
    Agree, I just meant on the pricing. I like the rpi, have hads lots of fun with the rpi4 making a custom home media player. Just at this price point not sure it makes much sense for as many people to play around with.
    - LtWorf 4mo ago
      I use two rpi4 with a touchscreen and some relays connected to gpio to control my lights, speakers, heater, and with some USB-powered speakers I have internet radio (usable also as alarm) and I can see when the bus comes and set timers for cooking. Since the USB-powered speakers emit noise when not in use, I power down the USB port entirely when they are not in use. I use openbox to start my software and have a couple of python daemons to control the relays and decide what to turn on and off. Also they don't have a battery so I'm not in need to keep an eye on something that might explode.
- Pavilion2095 4mo ago
  These are two very different devices that serve two very different purposes. The comparison is flawed.
pseudosavant 4mo ago
Not a completely invalid or uncommon take, but also not completely correct. People lament that it isn't the $25 like it used to be with the Pi 2/3, but ignore that you can get a Pi Zero 2 W (quad A53 cores like 3B, 512MB RAM) for <$20. I've used them for a bunch of projects: moonlight game streaming client, on-stage video player controlled by a foot pedal, Bluetooth controlled recorder for USB audio interfaces, Tailscale exit node, etc. They are tiny and great! https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2-w/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2-w/ I wish a Pi 5 (and RAM in general) was cheaper, but Raspberry Pi can't control that.
- pibaker 4mo ago
  Some people seem to think raspberry pi is a consumer tech company and whenever a new model is released, the old one will be discontinued. They will complain about the product being changed and the company robbing them of a cheap SBC. I can only assume they don't actually work with the pi because if you spend just a minute looking at any reseller's inventory or even just the official website you will see they still make and sell and support boards from a decade ago.
  - javchz 4mo ago
    Agree. It's clear since COVID that Pi it's barely a company for makers or DIYers anymore, but it's a supply company for small to medium industries to integrate cheap PCs in their manufacturing process and they are good at that role.
    - hatthew 4mo ago
      Huh. I had a work project a decade ago where we were evaluating SBCs as drivers for kiosks. At that time, the prevailing wisdom was that the Pi was specifically not for industry, as its main advantage was the strong community to provide support for DIYers. Competitors like PINE64 and Orange Pi were the same/better specs at half the price.
      - 4mo ago
8fingerlouie 4mo ago
I was recently looking for an upgrade for my aging HA Green, and I had an 8GB RPi5 with a m.2 hat, case and PSU selected, but when I checked prices I could get an 8GB Zimaboard 2 that includes 32GB eMMC for $10 more than the RPi, and that gets me a n150 processor, 2x2.5Gbit networking, 2 SATA ports and a PCIe expansion port. It idles at 5-7W. So yeah, the RPi5 has gotten prohibitively expensive, at least to the point where a chinesium mini pc is cheaper, has better performance, and about the same power consumption.
- kristianp 4mo ago
  And the n150 supports AVX2: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/241636/intel-processor-n150-6m-cache-up-to-3-60-ghz/specifications.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/241636/...
- imp0cat 4mo ago
  Why were you looking for a replacement/upgrade? Is your HA Green failing, or is it just too slow? Asking as someone who is considering purchasing one (just to run HA on it, obviously).
  - 8fingerlouie 4mo ago
    I kinda just outgrew it. I migrated from Homey to HA, and with 2500+ entities across some 250-300 devices the HA Green performed well. It would sit at about 55% RAM usage with 5-7% CPU load, so in no way resource strained. My storage however was not exactly doing well. I frequently hit 80% or more storage used (of the 32GB eMMC). The HA Green uses USB2 and has no connectors for adding more storage like the M.2 slot on the HA Yellow, so there was no easy upgrade path. Compute wise and RAM wise the device did well. I ran HA, Mosquito, ESPHome Device Builder, Matter Server, OpenThread Border Router, Piper, Speech to Phrase and a couple other add-ons, and besides the speech stuff it worked well and responded fast to almost everything. Speech in any other language than English is slow at best. English is a little better, but don't expect to have long conversations with it in realtime. For my use case, of making one way announcements, it didn't matter much if it spent 3 or 30 seconds preparing the announcement, it would arrive when it arrived. The HA Green lives on in my summerhouse which has around 900 entities and maybe 50 devices. It works well there, sits at 2% CPU, 39% RAM, and 45% storage, so I guess it depends on the "size" of your installation. At home I'm monitoring "all the things", EV stats, EV Charger stats, heat pump stats, TRVs, smart electricity meter, room level presence detection (Bluetooth LE), mmWave presence detection, Smart Switches, Smart TVs, Apple TVs, Sonos Speakers, everything. I also have around 100 automations dealing with various house states, like when the heat pump and EV charger both kick in at full power, an automation will tell the EV charger to chill a bit before it blows the main fuse, and once the heat pump finishes its cycle, ramp up the EV charger again. The summerhouse, on account of being smaller, naturally has less stuff going on. It's a place for relaxation, and most automations and sensors there are targeted at detecting stuff when we're not around like water leaks, temperature drops, heating anomalies, motion detection by the cameras, etc.
elorant 4mo ago
Raspberries are basically for DIY projects. I have one on my router handling call blocking for my landline. If it was costing $300 I would rather get a mini PC or use one of my defunct phones with UserLand on it. I can't see any world where a comparison to an entry level laptop makes sense.
- pibaker 4mo ago
  You don't need a $300 pi for call blocking. They still make and sell $30 models that will be an overkill for your use case.
  - shye 4mo ago
    Or $3 for an ESP32 devboard.
sleepybrett 4mo ago
... there is no mac micro, but there is an appletv
- drnick1 4mo ago
  Locked down BS appliance.
  - sleepybrett 4mo ago
    with that new cheaporino macbook running on the same chip, i imagine it's only a matter of time before someone figures out how to install and boot it on tv hardware.
flobosg 4mo ago
> Mac Micro Mac Nano, just like iPods!
- steveBK123 4mo ago
  Correct take
- HerbManic 4mo ago
  Mac Nugget. Mac-aroon. SnackBook.
jrm4 4mo ago
The war on general purpose computing is real.
- dpe82 4mo ago
  Also known as: supply and demand.
rjrjrjrj 4mo ago
A Mac Neo would be great. But for now, Intel N150 mini PCs are probably a better choice than RPi for those types of tasks.
- HerbManic 4mo ago
  I saw a talk about a year back with them arguing that things like N150 platforms are probably a better choice than Pi based machines. Came down to, wide software support with x86, higher performance, UEFI, secure boot and storage standards like NVME slots. It was a fair argument but doesn't apply to everyone.
__patchbit__ 4mo ago
Apple could bridge the gap between Mac Mini Pro and HomePod Mini for the Neo to try experimental local AI configs in need of more memory and storage. The Vision Neo completes the three part environment system for students in biology or morphogenesis and robot design.
huflungdung 4mo ago
[dead]
niutech 4mo ago
You can get Radxa ROCK 5C 16GB RAM for $160 on AliExpress: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007473801146.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007473801146.html

Aurornis 4mo ago

8GB of LPDDR memory is around $100 in volume. That leaves $100 for everything else on the Pi, including the hardware, building it, transporting it, and retailer margin. That leaves $500 for everything else on the MacBook Neo. That's why you can get so much more from the MacBook Neo. There's 5X as much budget for everything other than RAM.

yftsui 4mo ago
Assume the numbers are correct, Pi spent $100 for a PCB with some components; Neo's hardware includes keyboard, 13 inch display, aluminum chassis, battery, charger. You remove the costs of the above from that $500.
rerdavies 4mo ago
I'm wondering how "everything just costs twice for exactly the same thing because it's Apple" factors into the equation.

bigyabai 4mo ago

I dunno, it's not unexpected. Smartphone hardware has been cheaper, more proliferate and faster than Raspberry Pis for a while. The Pi Foundation finds a market by supporting Linux, documenting GPIO and Arduino/hat ecosystems, and advocating for a hackier, server-like approach with the cheap hardware. Game consoles, smartphones and consumer laptops are often powerful, but priced taking the customer's service revenue into account. My Raspberry Pi is definitely outclassed by a few of my old phones and laptops. But it's also super pleasant to host services on, so it's my go-to SBC.

LtWorf 4mo ago
Phones don't have any I/O and android is a pain in the ass to experiment with. Plus by default it will do things like powersave.
- NoGravitas 4mo ago
  If I could install PostmarketOS (and a close-to-mainline kernel?) on one of my old smartphones, I'd rather use that for my cyberdeck project than a Pi. I'm not prepared to do a pmos bring-up on an unsupported phone, though.
  - LtWorf 4mo ago
    Good luck with that, I think the chance that your phone is supported and works are very slim unless you bought it on purpose for that.

zerobees 4mo ago

Having had a subscription to Hack-a-Day for a long time, I firmly believe that the vast majority of "weird one-off" Raspberry Pi projects don't actually need anything as capable as a Raspberry Pi SBC. It's just a matter of brand recognition and familiarity. If it gets too expensive, I suspect that more users will migrate to microcontrollers than to gutted notebooks. You don't even need to learn anything new, I'm sure you can ask Claude to vibe code something on RP2350 nowadays and there's an 80% chance it will work.

peterburkimsher 4mo ago
Another Hackaday reader here. I think that the RPi shines in projects where GPIO are needed, yet the developer needs a full Linux OS (usually to run Python). I agree that vibe coding microcontrollers will increase the use of embedded systems instead of RPi devices. Seems like a good move for them to have built the RPi Pico.
- dannyw 4mo ago
  There’s something really fun about writing your own microcontroller code as a software engineer that hasn’t worked with embedded before. At least for me. Before you just vibe code, consider if it piques your interest. You might just enjoy learning, playing, and building with something new. When you get stuck, hand it over to AI.
barnas2 4mo ago
I built a portable meshtastic terminal using Claude and a Pico 2. It's written 100% of the code in MicroPython and it works great. It even wrote the driver for the E-ink screen I'm using. I built a jig to hold a webcam and the e-ink screen, then had Claude write a script/MCP that takes a photo and crops just the screen out. Then I asked it to figure out a driver, and after a 20 minute loop of taking photos and updating it's driver, it was done.
HerbManic 4mo ago
A lot of things wouldn't even need a RP2350. The original Arduino alone was pretty slick for a lot of cool small scale projects.

roody15 4mo ago

Education price for schools is 499$ for the Neo. Have to agree no longer sure the pi makes much sense at this price point.

LtWorf 4mo ago
Except that a rpi is a device made for learning things and a Neo is a device made to be a door to a shop.
- roody15 4mo ago
  Agree, I just meant on the pricing. I like the rpi, have hads lots of fun with the rpi4 making a custom home media player. Just at this price point not sure it makes much sense for as many people to play around with.
  - LtWorf 4mo ago
    I use two rpi4 with a touchscreen and some relays connected to gpio to control my lights, speakers, heater, and with some USB-powered speakers I have internet radio (usable also as alarm) and I can see when the bus comes and set timers for cooking. Since the USB-powered speakers emit noise when not in use, I power down the USB port entirely when they are not in use. I use openbox to start my software and have a couple of python daemons to control the relays and decide what to turn on and off. Also they don't have a battery so I'm not in need to keep an eye on something that might explode.
Pavilion2095 4mo ago
These are two very different devices that serve two very different purposes. The comparison is flawed.

pseudosavant 4mo ago

Not a completely invalid or uncommon take, but also not completely correct. People lament that it isn't the $25 like it used to be with the Pi 2/3, but ignore that you can get a Pi Zero 2 W (quad A53 cores like 3B, 512MB RAM) for <$20. I've used them for a bunch of projects: moonlight game streaming client, on-stage video player controlled by a foot pedal, Bluetooth controlled recorder for USB audio interfaces, Tailscale exit node, etc. They are tiny and great! https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2-w/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero-2-w/ I wish a Pi 5 (and RAM in general) was cheaper, but Raspberry Pi can't control that.

pibaker 4mo ago
Some people seem to think raspberry pi is a consumer tech company and whenever a new model is released, the old one will be discontinued. They will complain about the product being changed and the company robbing them of a cheap SBC. I can only assume they don't actually work with the pi because if you spend just a minute looking at any reseller's inventory or even just the official website you will see they still make and sell and support boards from a decade ago.
- javchz 4mo ago
  Agree. It's clear since COVID that Pi it's barely a company for makers or DIYers anymore, but it's a supply company for small to medium industries to integrate cheap PCs in their manufacturing process and they are good at that role.
  - hatthew 4mo ago
    Huh. I had a work project a decade ago where we were evaluating SBCs as drivers for kiosks. At that time, the prevailing wisdom was that the Pi was specifically not for industry, as its main advantage was the strong community to provide support for DIYers. Competitors like PINE64 and Orange Pi were the same/better specs at half the price.
    - 4mo ago

8fingerlouie 4mo ago

I was recently looking for an upgrade for my aging HA Green, and I had an 8GB RPi5 with a m.2 hat, case and PSU selected, but when I checked prices I could get an 8GB Zimaboard 2 that includes 32GB eMMC for $10 more than the RPi, and that gets me a n150 processor, 2x2.5Gbit networking, 2 SATA ports and a PCIe expansion port. It idles at 5-7W. So yeah, the RPi5 has gotten prohibitively expensive, at least to the point where a chinesium mini pc is cheaper, has better performance, and about the same power consumption.

kristianp 4mo ago
And the n150 supports AVX2: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/241636/intel-processor-n150-6m-cache-up-to-3-60-ghz/specifications.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/241636/...
imp0cat 4mo ago
Why were you looking for a replacement/upgrade? Is your HA Green failing, or is it just too slow? Asking as someone who is considering purchasing one (just to run HA on it, obviously).
- 8fingerlouie 4mo ago
  I kinda just outgrew it. I migrated from Homey to HA, and with 2500+ entities across some 250-300 devices the HA Green performed well. It would sit at about 55% RAM usage with 5-7% CPU load, so in no way resource strained. My storage however was not exactly doing well. I frequently hit 80% or more storage used (of the 32GB eMMC). The HA Green uses USB2 and has no connectors for adding more storage like the M.2 slot on the HA Yellow, so there was no easy upgrade path. Compute wise and RAM wise the device did well. I ran HA, Mosquito, ESPHome Device Builder, Matter Server, OpenThread Border Router, Piper, Speech to Phrase and a couple other add-ons, and besides the speech stuff it worked well and responded fast to almost everything. Speech in any other language than English is slow at best. English is a little better, but don't expect to have long conversations with it in realtime. For my use case, of making one way announcements, it didn't matter much if it spent 3 or 30 seconds preparing the announcement, it would arrive when it arrived. The HA Green lives on in my summerhouse which has around 900 entities and maybe 50 devices. It works well there, sits at 2% CPU, 39% RAM, and 45% storage, so I guess it depends on the "size" of your installation. At home I'm monitoring "all the things", EV stats, EV Charger stats, heat pump stats, TRVs, smart electricity meter, room level presence detection (Bluetooth LE), mmWave presence detection, Smart Switches, Smart TVs, Apple TVs, Sonos Speakers, everything. I also have around 100 automations dealing with various house states, like when the heat pump and EV charger both kick in at full power, an automation will tell the EV charger to chill a bit before it blows the main fuse, and once the heat pump finishes its cycle, ramp up the EV charger again. The summerhouse, on account of being smaller, naturally has less stuff going on. It's a place for relaxation, and most automations and sensors there are targeted at detecting stuff when we're not around like water leaks, temperature drops, heating anomalies, motion detection by the cameras, etc.

elorant 4mo ago

Raspberries are basically for DIY projects. I have one on my router handling call blocking for my landline. If it was costing $300 I would rather get a mini PC or use one of my defunct phones with UserLand on it. I can't see any world where a comparison to an entry level laptop makes sense.

pibaker 4mo ago
You don't need a $300 pi for call blocking. They still make and sell $30 models that will be an overkill for your use case.
- shye 4mo ago
  Or $3 for an ESP32 devboard.

sleepybrett 4mo ago

... there is no mac micro, but there is an appletv

drnick1 4mo ago
Locked down BS appliance.
- sleepybrett 4mo ago
  with that new cheaporino macbook running on the same chip, i imagine it's only a matter of time before someone figures out how to install and boot it on tv hardware.

flobosg 4mo ago

> Mac Micro Mac Nano, just like iPods!

steveBK123 4mo ago
Correct take
HerbManic 4mo ago
Mac Nugget. Mac-aroon. SnackBook.

jrm4 4mo ago

The war on general purpose computing is real.

dpe82 4mo ago
Also known as: supply and demand.

rjrjrjrj 4mo ago

A Mac Neo would be great. But for now, Intel N150 mini PCs are probably a better choice than RPi for those types of tasks.

HerbManic 4mo ago
I saw a talk about a year back with them arguing that things like N150 platforms are probably a better choice than Pi based machines. Came down to, wide software support with x86, higher performance, UEFI, secure boot and storage standards like NVME slots. It was a fair argument but doesn't apply to everyone.

__patchbit__ 4mo ago

Apple could bridge the gap between Mac Mini Pro and HomePod Mini for the Neo to try experimental local AI configs in need of more memory and storage. The Vision Neo completes the three part environment system for students in biology or morphogenesis and robot design.

huflungdung 4mo ago

[dead]

niutech 4mo ago

You can get Radxa ROCK 5C 16GB RAM for $160 on AliExpress: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007473801146.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007473801146.html