False advertising ?

[bonterra]

What do you think you're going to use the PI 3B for, that you can't use the PineA64 for... inquiring minds want to know?

He already told you, a media player. Kodi, Plex and OSMC works perfectly well on RPi3.

... The PI has only 1Gb of memory, its not a media center either, it doesn't do Android at all, it has no Euler bus, its blue tooth and serial uart (at this point) are crap, it has no power management IC, its composite video stereo audio plug is useless mostly (the audio is really bad, and the video is ancient history), the boot-up sequence is dumb (and proprietary), and the hardware is a closed PITA.  So, you can run Raspbian with 1Gb of memory... and you plan to do what with it, exactly?

What do you need Android, Euler buses or a serial uart for on a media player? You need a working graphics driver, a HDMI port and software support, both of which are available for the RPi.

And open source hardware and boot sequence, come on, are you going to start producing your own boards?

So, if the PineA64 is worthless hardware, the PI 3B is mostly less than worthless hardware with half the memory...

And a number of fully working OS's. If Raspbian doesn't float your boat, how about Arch? Or Fedora? Or W10 IoT?

I'm nearing the end of my third full week of using the PineA64 (on three different operatings systems, albeit same kernel) as my full desktop PC (using it right now)... I have used all buses, all ports, tested bluetooth, wifi, and serial, and I've even run it headless...  so me and this worthless hardware are doing pretty well together/

Yeah, we know that by now, considering the number of forum posts you've made so far raising this boards to the sky and trying to convince sceptics that they're all wrong, just because they're disappointed.

Are you on the board at the Raspberry PI Foundation?

Probably, as are all other Pine sceptics (it's a pretty big board by now!)

The Pine guys must love your enthusiasm.

As far as false advertising goes, the most one might be able to say with some fairness is that they met up with the classic marketing bait and switch ... clearly, this is NOT a $15 computer board. In reality the Raspberry PI Foundation did the same thing ...  their boards is also clearly NOT a $35 computer board. By the time you add power, SD card, heatsink and fan, case, usb receiver and peripheral stuff like a Sparkfun breakout board, well, its closer to $100 dollars too ! So far I've spent about $150 bucks on my PineA64 computer -- and that includes multiple SD cards. I'm not including peripheral stuff I already had for the PI.  

I think this is the only point where you and I agree, although the only accessories absolutely necessary are the power and sd card (you shouldn't have to spend more than $20-25 on those).

On the other hand, did the Pine64 team produce a $15 board ?  Yes, they did. Has the Raspberry PI Foundation produced a $5 dollar board ? Yes, they did.  Try to find either one of them on the open market today !! 

Just saying.

As far as I could tell, both Pimoroni and The Pi Hut had Zeroes in stock at 7 AM this morning (GMT). Bare boards sold at £4 that is, not only kits.

Just saying.