@manfromhuh i don't really understand how ex. clockwork still can't manage fulfillment after several years of being in business. if the problem was high demand, well, manufacturers actually like bigger bulk orders. people should not be waiting years and getting random allotments from small batches. there should be big orders going through, maybe some kind of waitlist notification where its inevitable (maybe the factory IS running at max production idk)

pine similarly tend to be assclowns. you will eventully get your pine, but they sell literally everything as "for devs" meaning they don't ever finish any product and just hawk hardware for hardware hackers. (they also drop ship or something, because fulfillment is slow a fuck.) they also seem to struggle to ever get things back in stock.

maybe hardware is like super hard but feels like they just literally aren't trying actually