> its like comparing apples and oranges.

Yeah, I don't disagree, but I would argue the Raspberry was always an applorange, and that's exactly what made it popular (together with the cheap price in the beginning, which made it basically an impulse buy). It brought people into microcontroller/embedded systems territory without having to actually deal with all of the stuff that made this so daunting. As you said, it is basically a normal Linux PC, just that it runs Arm and has GPIO. People who are really into electronics/embedded systems will use a proper microcontroller nowadays anyway, these have gotten so powerful and easy to use that there's really no reason for a Pi anymore. And on the other side, people who want a little server, a pi-hole, tailscale or octoprint or whatever, can just use an old used laptop/miniPC or similar. Since the Pi has gotten so expensive, I see basically no reason to get one anymore.