> The vendor just doesn't want to acknowledge the real role of Raspberry Pi is not limited to being a cheap tinkerer board anymore
To me, tinkering means GPIO.
That's why I was asking why the want for a Raspberry Pi, why not get something else that already exist. I'm curious what they're looking for. Of course if they still want GPIO then that's a valid point.
> not limited to being a cheap tinkerer board anymore
being not limited to being a cheap tinkerer board doesn't mean not being a [slightly less cheap] tinkerer board among the rest of roles. I didn't mean I don't need GPIO. I actually want more GPIO so I could connect a "hat", an infrared port, a cooler and still have spare pins for actual tinkering.
Another cool thing available exclusively with Raspberry Pi is polished Raspbian OS coming with free Mathematica and other goodies.
Hardware codecs also feels nice and, AFAIK, you don't get them with x86.
At last but not at least (this arguably is the most valuable part actually) it is THE SBC. This means it's easy and efficient to target for a developer (incl hardware developers) and easy and efficient to share problems and solutions for the community.
