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Raspberry Pi Becomes Third Best-Selling General Purpose Computer of All Time, Beating Commodore 64 (raspberrypi.org)
The Raspberry Pi has outsold the Commodore 64 by selling north of 12.5 million boards in five years, becoming the world's third best-selling general purpose computer. "The Commodore 64, had, until recently, the distinction of being the third most popular general purpose computing platform," Eben Upton told a crowd at the fifth birthday party. "That's what I'm here to celebrate," he said, "we are now the third most popular general purpose computing platform after the Mac and PC." The MagPi Magazine reports: The Raspberry Pi Model 3 is the best-selling Raspberry Pi. This chart shows that Raspberry Pi 3 has accounted for almost a third of all Raspberry Pi boards sold. The Model 3 sits next to its immediate predecessor, the Raspberry Pi 2B+ (which has the same board shape but a slightly slower CPU). These two boards account for over half of all Raspberry Pi boards sold. The rest of the sales are between older models. The original Model A accounts for just 2 percent of sales. So keep one if you've got it as they're pretty rare. We should point out, before the Commodore fan club arrives, that there are discrepancies in the total number of sales of the C64. The 12.5 million figure comes from an analysis of serial numbers. This article by Michael Steil explains in detail why the 12.5 million number is accurate. We hold it to be the most accurate analysis of Commodore 64 sales (other opinions are available).
It seems like a bit of a stretch to call it that. There are the basic features I would consider a "General Purpose" computer to have (and, to be fair, the Raspberry Pi has many of them):
- Wall (or POE) Power Supply
- SSD/HHD (the SD Card of the Raspberry Pi could probably be considered that)
- USB Ports for Keyboard/Mouse (Raspberry Pi has that)
- Video Output (Raspberry Pi has that)
- Network Connection (Raspberry Pi has that)
- Ready to use OS (I guess Raspberry Pi could be considered to have that with Raspbian)
More philosophically, I would consider a General Purpose computer to be one that you take out of the box, plug in and turn on - the Raspberry Pi really doesn't fit that use case which makes it hard for me to consider it a "General Purpose" computer.
I would consider it to be a very successful "Custom Purpose" computer, however.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
These numbers are crazy. They're probably counting sales and not use.
Surely, most Pi's are just used as cheap C64 emulation machines, letting the C64 continue to reign supreme. (Those not being used as a replacement C64 are all obviously just collecting dust in a drawer.)
Required reading for internet skeptics
Open firmware: https://github.com/christinaa/...
Coders wanted. Linux bring-up is done, needs USB and display to be more useful. Discussion happens on Freenode IRC #raspberrypi-internals
When this popular embedded platform has a fully functional open firmware to use instead of the proprietary bootcode.bin then I'll be a little more cheery about the success of the Raspberry Pi worldwide.
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
The Commodore 64 is "the best-selling home computer of all time" which is based on the fact that the Commodore 64 is a very specific model of computer. The Raspberry Pi 3 IS NOT the same thing as a Raspberry Pi. That's like saying the Commodore 128 is the same thing as the Commodore 64. The C64C was "the same thing" as the C64 because it was a cost-reduced version that was otherwise a completely identical piece of hardware. Each RPi is a completely different computer from the core chip to the peripherals to the I/O.
Combining all computers that are branded Raspberry Pi and saying they have sold more units combined than the Commodore 64 is one thing, but saying "The Pi has beaten the C64 as the most units of a single computer sold" is an outright lie. The Pi series is also not a computer made for general-purpose use; it's an embedded system, and by that standard I'm willing to bet that there's some model of wireless router that has sold more units than the C64; perhaps the venerable Linksys WRT54G?
tl;dr: the C64 still holds the crown. The article is based on bullshit logic.
I get the joke, but mine is a very effective headless, X-less torrent client and media server. It streams internet radio into the home stereo, and without the buffering issues that Windows machines seem to have. I can add a Linux ISO to the torrent queue and forget about it until I actually want to try it out.
Both of which could be handled by an old laptop running Windows or Debian, of course, but not for the price and energy consumption of the Pi.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom