Both global and EU store still sell things. They are still active on social media. I have plenty of their products (PinePhone with keyboard case, PinePhone Pro with LoRA add-on, Pinecil, PineTab2, PineNote, PineTime) which I use often, some on a daily basis, other weekly basis. They just work. As others have pointers out they don't do software, "just" hardware with some community fostering. If tomorrow they announce another product (not sure what that could be as, simply by listing now they are covering already a LOT) and if I need it, I would buy it without much hesitation.
Now I imagine if they don't have anything new they don't announce much, which is reasonable. They might not need the "buzz" as long as they manage the sales in their pipelines.
I would honestly like to see more products but arguably they already have good coverage. Let me ask you then, what do you wish they would add to their existing product line?
I would guess that they'll be sourcing a next-gen RISC-V processor ASAP, since those will enable virtualisation. If they stick one in a laptop shell I'd probably buy it pretty quickly. Doubly so if it has EFI.
Pine64s "problem" was they only ever did the hardware. Like they sponsor some software, but they make and sell hardware. They gained a lot of popularity from the Pinephone, but very little changed internally at Pine64. They're still the same they always were
What? I get really annoyed at hardware companies that do software. Like, first thing I'm gonna do with anything I buy is wipe it and install my own OS. Why would you waste so much time making a forked OS?
Do one thing, and do it well.
I think you are confusing "making another fedora fork for a laptop brand" with "porting a booloader to the device" or "writing a driver for the screen". Simply put you would not be able to use the hardware without the software. Outsourcing it to the community makes the hardware cheaper but the sideeffect is that the software will be crappy even after years of development. For some reason people aren't very keen on writing the low level stuff.
If you compare the Espruino smart watch to the Pine64 smartwatch, it's a night and day difference. My guess is that it's because Espruino handles the low level stuff and let community do the fun stuff, while Pine64 leaves everything on the community. Imo you need a fulltime developer who actually spends time looking in the datasheet and figuring out, how to properly put the PineTime to sleep, not just people who peek into the docs every Saturday.
We're talking about low level software that makes the hardware usable here, the reason that Raspberry Pi is the king of this market is because they have the software support that allows their hardware to just work. Pine64 relies on the community to do this for each of the boards they release.
Pine64's most successful products have been the ones they release as full products with working firmware.
for example to make sure you have got drivers.
but then, you need software for less computer-like devices too, like a smart watch or earbuds. do you immediately reflash those too? and who will make the software?
Especially when software already exists, it prevent duplicating efforts.
Sure thats true as long as the basic support on compatibility is there, but as I understand it Pine is so hardware-only that they make it hard for other projects to even support their hardware, i.e. with lacking drivers as the other comment addressed.
My wife has one, it's been a long time since she have talked about it though.
She used to mention when improvements were made.Edit: Pinephone.
Just looking at the Infinitime repo, they seem alive and well, even changing EoL chips
https://github.com/InfiniTimeOrg/InfiniTime/releases/
https://github.com/InfiniTimeOrg/pinetime-mcuboot-bootloader/releases/tag/1.0.1
I was under the impression that infinitime was more of a community effort than a pine64 effort?
It is, but they are talking about the hardware in these last release notes, about a chip that will get replaced in the actual hardware, therefor i don't think they are completely dead! Long lice Pine64
It is the same/similar problem that Nokia/Maemo and Sailfish/merOS have all had.
Some things are binary-blobs + NDAs and many things are still locked, the OSS community can only do so much before they hit the commercial roadblocks.
We need a complete CoreBoot + OSS silicon-chips + OSS firmware + all-community / all-commercial dual production lines.
The open-source-based company should be able to sell both the commercial locked-version and the oss-all-unlocked-version with the ability to switch infinitely between the two models.
But the world of electronics rarely will ever work or reach that level of interoperability , repairability or recycling this way. Not for a long time maybe in some distant future.
Definitely a long way off from how active they were a year or two ago.
I mean their August 2023 blog post was basically "We were busy, sorry for not posting updates." So considering you can still normally buy and receive a product from them, they are probably busy again. (or don't want to write blog posts) Which doesn't mean Pine64 is dead, just that you won't get updates.
Imo it's good that they aren't releasing another useless product but it's a shame that the Pine Note isn't available for purchase now that it has matured. Would have been such a cool device.
Feels like there's a lot of that going around.
It seems like every FOSS project I stumble across these days hasn't had a commit in at least a year.
Not the huge ones, obviously, but anything even slightly off the mainstream.
I’ve noticed that too. Is it related to covid you think? As in it was like this before and now we’re returning to normal progression as people rebuild social connections and lose time. Or is it that the whole dev economy is changing with layoffs and such that devs are leaving the industry altogether? Or something else even?
Check out their matrix https://pine64.org/community/
https://pine64.org/2024/03/17/march-update-making-waves/
Doesn't look dead to me.
Are you wanting monthly updates or something?
I don't get why people freak out if they don't see constant updates. Is this the result of Fortinite updates on one's brain?
They had monthly updates almost 2 years straight. They weren't big but they had the latest news. The fact they suddenly went quite with little community engagement is concerning to me
To me that just signifies the company has stabilized and no longer needs to put out statements constantly to keep eyes on them for marketing reasons.
Sometimes this can just be that the person driving engagement has moved on or shifted focus. I don't think it's a large company by any means.
Certainly feels like it and I personally wouldn't buy anything from them at the moment.
Edit: would -> wouldn't
Bought a Pinecil a few weeks ago. No problems.
I have ordered stuff from them before and they delivered every time. I don't think they would sell something they don't plan to ship. If you look at the inventory it is a little parse.
Also I believe they contract an outside company to manage the warehouse and to fulfill orders
I made an order on their site just last week without any issues. Granted, I haven't received it just yet since it's an international shipment, but according to tracking info it's in transit.
minor spelling mistake
I have ordered stuff from them before and they delivered every time. I don't think they would sell something they don't plan to ship. If you look at the inventory it is a little parse.
the EU store regularly posts updates on stock
I'm focusing more on the community building and advancing software parts of the work they did/do. Some products are in a pretty good state, but that's not the case for others.
FUD
