The more things change…

It’s refreshing that newer doesn’t always have to mean bigger and better. I’ve been using a Raspberry Pi 4 for the last few years as a desktop Linux machine, and although it could be faster, then thing that holds me back from upgrading it is nothing to do with the Pi itself. It’s the peripherals: if I moved to a Raspberry Pi 5 I’d have to get new headphones, as the Raspberry Pi 5 moved away from a 3.5mm headphone jack. I’d have to spend money on headphones that use Bluetooth, and forever be losing them or running out of charge. I realise this makes me unusual in the world of the tech enthusiast, but once I get something that works, I just don’t want to go to the effort of changing it.

That may make me an outlier in terms of individuals, but there’s another consumer sector that really wants to be able to get the bare minimum and stick with it: businesses. Upgrading is a cost. Buying new cables because the new version of a device uses USB-C instead of Micro USB is a cost. Any change at all imposes a cost, and if you can avoid that, you’re winning.

We all know that things like connectivity and processing speed are features. But price is also a feature, and a really big one. So too is backward compatibility. If I don’t want to buy a new thing because it messes with my minimal setup of screen, keyboard, mouse and headphones, then it’s vanishingly unlikely that I’d invest in a new device if it meant I would have to build a whole new factory to accommodate it.

It’s great there are new devices to play with. But it’s even greater knowing that you can buy one, and build it into your project, or your product, or even your manufacturing setup, in confidence that it won’t be rendered obsolete by the next new model. It sounds counter-intuitive, but that’s how you keep customers coming back: not by locking them in, but by making it clear that they don’t have to upgrade if they don’t want to.