I can provide some information from personal experience. I was not aware of the Pi5's existence prior to its announcement just like everyone else. However I had been assisting Raspberry Pi LTD with the beta testing (reporting bugs, finding solutions, compatibility issues, etc) with their now released PiOS Bookworm. You apply to gain access to the Beta Forum area and that is where they announced the Bookworm Beta images (and ofc along with that, beta bookworm apt repos) and asked the community for help viewtopic.php?t=345124 . You can apply and if admitted see the Bookworm Beta forum which is still active and see any/all posts and comments I made during that time.OTOH plenty of people did seem to get given Pi 5 pre-launch, for beta testing, to ensure their software was working, and to ready their reviews for launch. I would class some of that as marketing purposes.
But I expect that not everyone who would like one gets one. I recall when Raspbian was being created the developers there were having to create their own build farm to get it done, didn't appear able to buy or get hold of free Pi.
It is poor form IMO to not receive a reply, and not the first time that's been reported, but without knowing all the details it's hard to say what happened there, or even tell if they ignored it, simply didn't receive it, it's stuck in a queue, or lost in the system.
After the Pi5 was announced I asked RPi LTD if I could purchase or receive one early for the continual development of pi-apps https://pi-apps.io/ (Raspberry Pi Software Store primarily for Desktop software) where we wanted to have a good launch experience for users. I used the https://www.raspberrypi.com/contact/ as a press enquiry and received an email response within 24hrs from the RPi LTD communications manager that they would not be able to send me a unit.
One week after the Pi5 announcement Raspberry Pi LTD decided to send out Pi5 units to some of the most active beta forum and regular forum members and I was fortunate enough to be one of them.
To my knowledge, everyone that received a Pi5 prior to its announcement was press (see all the announcement day youtube videos and blog posts from some of those press that showcase their Pi5 unit) and not a software/hardware developer. I have yet to see confirmation from any software/hardware developer that they received a Pi5 prior to its launch and certainly not prior to its announcement. The only exception that I am aware of is Canonical who had Pi5 hardware prior to its launch to have Ubuntu 23.10 ready for it on launch day.
Just to clarify, don't take my experience as gospel or assume that this is what they will do for future hardware announcements/releases.
Statistics: Posted by theofficialgman — Fri Jan 19, 2024 2:59 am