Looking at the Sparkfun comparison, it seems that the Due is by far the fastest of the Arduinos and has I/O capabilities similar to the Mega. So why was it retired with no obvious successor?
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I had assumed it was either because it wasn't successful, or to allow Intel to differentiate their products more easily. – gbulmer Jun 08 '16 at 23:12
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1It's a quite expensive and clumsy board. It also runs on 3.3V. It's also not based on the ATMega328(P) and may thus be incompatible with some libraries (that rely on low-level hardware). Arduino's are (mostly) for hobbyists, which require reasonably priced, not too big board, which they can use for anything. Most tutorials are based on the Uno and a few on Mega, thus someone looking to buy an Arduino, will most likely choose one of them. – aaa Jun 09 '16 at 10:38
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I'd say the 3.3V thing matters the most because most shields require 5V. – Avamander Jun 13 '16 at 18:56
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I bought a Due thinking it was the best thing ever. I cringed at the $50 (at the time) cost. But I bought it anyway. I actually think it's a great board. But, within a short amount of time I was finding many libs that would not work with it. I think most people realized that if you need something more advanced that UNO, and have $50 to spend, there are much better options out there. Not that I know what they are...I'm just thinking that is why you don't see the DUE mentioned as much. Shame really. I think it has potential. A Teensy3.x could be a good alternative for the DUE. – cbmeeks Aug 05 '16 at 20:29
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The Due is (was) a great board ! 32 bits bus, 86Mhz, same price as the Mega... Badly, the Arduino Drivers never worked well for the Due. If you want to program it, ASF was a better alternative – Alexis Paques Aug 16 '16 at 21:17
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"Why was the Due retired?" - It is quite interesting that Arduino.CC never explained that. One would think, that a professional company or organisation places a notice in advance with at least a short explanation as to why.
Most of the Arduinos, that have been available on both projects (CC and ORG) have suddenly and without further notice or explanation been retired on CC (the exceptions being Uno and Mega 2560, the cash-cows), but are still alive on ORG. It would seem, that either the "divorce" is proceeding or that the copyright case at the US court is not going as smoothly as Banzi hoped. Well, he could repeatedly "bend the truth" by claiming Arduino being completely his idea and design in front of the press (that never bothered to check the obvious facts), but laying such a claim at court is borderline criminal. (see also: arduinohistory.github.io and make your own opinion) CC has still the biggest chunk of the overall community and also serves as the central nexus for developers. But it seems there is a lot of movement... some people move to Wiring (from which the Arduino IDE was forked), others to 3rd Party sites and yet others try out different and newly emerging products (eg. Adafruits MCUs and Pi or the Renesas GR series). ORG on the other hand seems to become the bigger (Arduino branded) hardware supplier and developer. CC has apparently out-sourced this to Intel and tries to live of royalties and "certification" fees (which is the central point where Banzi and Martino started to heavily and openly disagree).
"Why was the Due retired?" - Unless CC doesn't give an explanation, there is no real answer. A lack of interest is certainly not the reason.
Bikky-kun
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Because, basically (in my opinion, anyway) it was rubbish.
Yes, it has grunt. Yes, it has IO, but the chips themselves are pretty rancid.
There are far better options than the SAM3X from other manufacturers.
Also, since all the in-fighting began between the two Arduino factions (.org / .cc) the majority of actual progress and innovation has been by third parties (Intel mostly).
Majenko
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Tiva comes to mind (if only they made LaunchPads compatible with shields [if only shields used a sane pin arrangement]). – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jun 08 '16 at 23:20
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@IgnacioVazquez-Abrams, I don't get the idea behind shields. It's rather impossible to allow multiple shields to be stacked, since you know they'll take up the same pins at some point? IMHO, they could've better gone with some "standard connectors" like UEXT (olimex) or Grove (Seeed). -Majenko How's the IDE/Compiler(s) of microchip nowadays? And what actually makes the difference with AVR's SAM3X and others? – aaa Jun 09 '16 at 10:40
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@Paul The IDE is the same as Arduino. You can install the chipKIT core into the Arduino IDE. You also have UECIDE, of course. The benefit of using PIC32 over the others is you get much better support from me :) Seriously, though, the PIC32 uses MIPS whereas most others bow down to the might of ARM. MIPS, MHz-for-MHz is actually slightly more efficient. Or it certainly has been historically. That's why 90% of home wireless routers use it. And now with 200MHz PIC32MZ chips with FPUs they really do fly along. – Majenko Jun 09 '16 at 10:44
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@Majenko, Hmm, I've worked with a PIC18F and IDE+compiler from Microchip. But for large objects I had to change memory banks in the linker file or something. And if you had a "non-paid" version of the compiler, they said it would be "less optimized". But the PIC32 series seems promising. I've also looked at ARM based boards, (teensy3.2) which I think are very nice as well. Not sure how they compare, but I'm looking something that's easy to learn (lot's of resources online and less struggle with oddities). – aaa Jun 09 '16 at 11:16
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@Paul Software-wise the Teensy is probably the easiest. PJRC has put in a lot of work making it work really well and have good compatible libraries for it. The PIC32 boards (chipKIT) though have better hardware support - standard Arduino footprints, lots and lots of IO, built in Ethernet or WiFi on some models, etc. The Teensy is one product done very well, but doesn't always fit everyone's needs. chipKIT has far more to choose from, but the software is sometimes a little lacking, though it is improving all the time. Also I am available for hire to create new chipKIT boards ;) – Majenko Jun 09 '16 at 11:21
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The PIC32 chipKIT compiler is the open-source portions (i.e., GCC) of XC32. Freely available. Full C++, etc. The main difference is it uses newlib instead of Microchip's own C library. Whoop-de-doo ;) – Majenko Jun 09 '16 at 11:22
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@Majenko Built-in ethernet is something that'll come in very handy ;). And indeed seems that it's much better "supported" as the PIC18F's. I was thinking of the difference between ARM and PIC32, but I guess it doesn't really matter that much per se. Ideally, I should get into both :x It's good to work with something more "professional" as Arduino, but prototyping/building with DIP package (328P) is just so much easier/cheaper :) (But we shouldn't be chatting in this comment section (though it's more interesting as the original question xD) – aaa Jun 09 '16 at 11:42
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1@Paul There are PIC32s in DIP format believe it or not - the PIC32MX1xx/2xx chips are available in 28 pin DIP ideal for breadboard use. – Majenko Jun 09 '16 at 11:44
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@Majenko: Your review is doubtful and partial (in fact totally useless for me). Not all use the Arduino IDE with this great board. For example, I'm was successful when programming directly in raw C (register level) using Atmel Studio with my Engineering students. An excellent resource to study the ARM Cortex-M3 architecture. I believe that the most advanced users lose by removing this board, while keeping Arduino Zero board (based on Cortex-M0, Von Neumann). At the end, the problem was price and few knew how to program its valuable internal peripherals. Long live to my DUE boards! – Jun 16 '16 at 00:40
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It's not a review, it's an opinion. The entire question is about opinion. That is why the question is closed. My opinion is that the Sam3x chips are vile. – Majenko Jun 16 '16 at 07:29
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@Majenko could you please elaborate? I know it's old but I'd be genuinely interested why you say that. It seems like it'd be better than say a Mega2560 in every way (except arguably voltage). – 101 Feb 01 '19 at 04:13