VIA Announces its Raspberry Pi Competitor, 'APC'

[Rob Williams]

VIA has just thrown its hat into the arena where the Raspberry Pi currently dominates, with its "APC". But there's a twist here. While RPi allows you to install multiple ARM-based OSes, VIA's APC comes pre-bundled with Android 2.3 "Gingerbread". The press release doesn't state whether or not Android can be replaced with another OS, but we hope to learn that soon.

Read the rest of our post and then discuss it here!

[Tharic-Nar]

Good test platform for folks to cut their teeth on Android (despite the old version). But it does beg the question of what else can it handle. The RPi has a growing collection of Linux variants ready to go, with people working on android ports too. The extra ram will be a big help though.

The RPi is targeted at a different crowd, it's meant to be an educational tool (in the making at least). Analogue audio, RCA video available for compatibility with TVs. The RPi does have a very decent GPU, but it's locked down at the moment (the Fedora Remix is working on that).

While more RAM is great, i think it's a good thing the RPi has it limited, it teaches restraint, kids can't load up everything they want on it, or write really inefficient code hogging RAM. Put some hard limits in and test their imagination.

The price point will be hard to compete with, just have to see what kind of community forms around this APC and what people will do with it. (and keep an eye on availability).