They reinvest the cash right back into development and production units. There is risk that this company will evaporate, however: https://www.pine64.org/philosophy/
None of us is as smart as all of us
~ Ken H. Blanchard
At the core of our philosophy is the notion that PINE64 is a community platform. [...] The goal is to deliver ARM64 devices that you really wish to engage with and a platform that you want to be a part of.
As such, if you can help them source better quality IPS panels, I know a guy you should talk to.
it sounds like a neat product, I'm just wishing they would charge more to cover the risk/rate of chargebacks rather than simply ask people not to sink them.
Yes of course, it would be nice if a bad batch didn't slow future development to a crawl. Pine64 works in batches, they don't ship promptly, they are also heavily preorder based for in-development projects, and they directly work with developers, as the people who buy them are also the developers of the software which runs on them.
Charging more would make this laptop less accessible to the vast majority of people. The Novena, Talos & many other libre hardware projects were always so expensive as to be botique afterthoughts, rather than "I can spend $100 and get a nice netbook".
None of us is as smart as all of us ~ Ken H. Blanchard At the core of our philosophy is the notion that PINE64 is a community platform. [...] The goal is to deliver ARM64 devices that you really wish to engage with and a platform that you want to be a part of.
As such, if you can help them source better quality IPS panels, I know a guy you should talk to.