alt Hacker NewsAgree with the above. As someone who has never heard of this before, the description of "a portable programmable device for music, graphics, code and writing" reads to me as "a computer". I'm kind of unsure why I would want to use this instead of the computer I'm typing on right now.
This seems to be targeting the market of users with the following intersecting interests: * DIY hardware enthusiast * musician * python developer * maybe also wants graphics...? Seems a small segment to me, but I assume I'm missing something here.
An immediate benefit I see is that they're cheap enough to use once - you could make/find/buy a software instrument that you like, then put it in your gear bag and never reflash it. Now it's just like any other synth. Then you can get a second Tulip and do the same thing later if you like. You could do this with laptops of course but it starts to get expensive.
The Pocket Operators have something similar (the KO at least, maybe the others). If you've written samples into them you want to preserve for playing live, you can snap a tab off and then they're read-only - no surprises on gig night.