The pi is useful because it is well supported. Either buy a x86, or buy pi - anything else and good luck keeping it working. You need to plan on spending your time writing/maintain the drivers to keep your system working.

Even for pi, the real value is in industrial companies that don't want to hire their own maintainers.

> Even for pi, the real value is in industrial companies that don't want to hire their own maintainers.

Reminds me of Adobe's history to be honest. They also were big on hooking the young to their ecosystem, including turning more than one blind eye towards piracy, and once they had a captive userbase plus a lack of competition, they enshittified.