Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️Oct 21, 2024
Anyone got a line on how many computers Apple shipped in their PowerPC era?
that's 1994-2006, 12 years. I want to know how many in total they sold.
Show threadAlice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️Oct 21, 2024

this says in 2006 they sold 4.5 million computers, and implies that this is a recent high.
so... 12*4.5 = 54 million as a guess at an upper bound?

https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0130/043.html

This Apple Is Too Shiny

The fashionable iPod has made Apple Computer beloved on Wall Street. But that success has hidden an off-key note: It's eroding the company's profitability.

Forbes
Show threadAlice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️Oct 21, 2024
okay lets be generous and say that number is way too low and they sold twice as many, at 108 million powerPC computers.
Show threadAlice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️Oct 21, 2024

So here's the fun thing:

The Nintendo Wii sold 101 million consoles.
The Xbox 360 sold over 81 million consoles.
The Nintendo Gamecube and Wii U add another 21 million and 14 million consoles.
All those consoles are PowerPC!

WHICH MEANS that Apple only managed to ship enough PowerPC Macs to about match the Nintendo Wii.
And all three PowerPC Nintendo consoles easily outsold all PowerPC macs.

So if you had a PowerPC chip in your house, it was most likely Nintendo's fault, not Apple's.

Show threadTom HarringtonOct 21, 2024
@foone I think even that probably overstates Apple's share of PowerPC sales. They switched to Intel partly because IBM's PowerPC roadmap didn't fit Apple's needs, and Apple's sales were too small for IBM to care. Besides the game systems there were tons of embedded applications, which is why the old CodeWarrior IDE for Macs ended up dropping Mac support for embedded development.
Show threadTom Harrington
@foone (of course NeXT/Apple Project Builder also had more than a little to do with CodeWarrior's change of focus)
Oct 21, 2024 at 11:08pmElk