
Raspberry Pi becomes best-selling UK computer ever as sales top 5M - benn_88
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2395736/raspberry-pi-makes-history-as-sales-hit-five-million
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tdicola
Wow I was curious and it looks like there were only ever about 5-6 million
Apple II computers produced (according to Wikipedia). That's pretty darn
amazing that the Pi is already on track to surpass the Apple II--what I
remember as the most ubiquitous and well loved computer for learning when I
grew up in the 80's.

I think it's officially time for anyone who doubted the Pi to eat crow. I know
I jumped on the bandwagon and never thought it would be worthwhile. Now I own
a couple of them and love them!

~~~
joezydeco
I remain skeptical that all 5 million units are in daily use.

A healthy fraction are probably in serious use by skilled embedded developers
and a certain range of users like XBMC fans. Another serious fraction are
probably using them for the actual educational purposes of the system.

But I fear that the majority are sitting in desk drawers, booted once and
tried and then left to gather dust. I compare them to treadmills. Some buy
them and use them religiously but most buy them with great intentions and
leave it at that.

~~~
tdicola
Does it really matter? I'm sure countless Apple II's, etc. were bought and
barely used too.

~~~
joezydeco
Kind of does matter when we're comparing the relative success of the two
devices.

We know about the ecosystem that sprung up from the Apple ][ because we have
history to look back upon. All the firms that sold software (I still miss
Beagle Bros). All the magazines. All the books. All the _accessories_.

I just don't see that same ecosystem surrounding the RPi, especially if 5
million users are involved. A couple of heavily trafficked forums don't really
seem like the same thing.

And given the Apple ]['s price ($1,200 in 1978 dollars or $4,700 in today's
money), they were probably not as quickly tossed aside once interest waned.
This was a serious a purchase as a used car.

~~~
bduerst
Different eras, different mediums.

I think the success is correlated in the markets that they are driving though.
RPi wasn't the first microcomputing board (Arduino was introduced 2005) but it
definitely popularized them. Now you have intel Edison and a bazillion other
tiny computers springing up.

It's easy to be skeptical now but I think 10 years from now it will be easier
to compare Apple IIe to RPi (good or bad).

~~~
joezydeco
If the RPi creates a wave of kids enthralled with embedded systems and Linux
system development, I'm certainly for it.

But, from my viewpoint as an embedded systems developer, I fear that those are
greatly steeper learning curves than how the Apple generation (myself
included) got started:

    
    
        ]10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD  ";
        ]20 GOTO 10
        ]RUN

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RoseO
I own an original Raspberry Pi model B (still running 24/7 in a project) for
which I was on the pre-order from one of the first few batches (I think I just
missed out on the first 10,000 or so), I eventually purchased an upgraded
model B with 512MB ram and then I instantly purchased the Pi 2.

Very useful things, and the progress made is wonderful.

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bencollier49
I guess they just beat the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Wikipedia page for that
has sales at 5 million.

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zend3v
Call me ignorant, but what is the point of this thing? Couldn't you just learn
to program on a normal PC like most people have instead of buying something
smaller, or are the potential uses for this thing really as limitless as I'm
lead to believe?

~~~
bduerst
You could, but a normal PC would run you more than $50, and would require
driver overhead, bios setup, etc. and would probably be overkill for small
projects.

The purpose of the Pi was to make an small, inexpensive educational board that
"just works". The hardware standard makes it easy to flash other instances
onto the Pi, and the form factor makes it easier to use with something you
couldn't put a PC box next to.

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rbanffy
I find it quite lovely its CPU is a direct descendant of the one that powered
the Acorn Archimedes, which, in turn, was inspired by the 6502 that powered
the BBC Micro, the Apple II, the 8-bit Atari family, the PET, the VIC-20, the
C-64 and so many others.

The Pi stands on the shoulders of a giant on top of a pyramid of giants.

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bonn1
The Brits had always a good feeling for 'personal computers' (Sinclair,
Amstrad, Acorn)

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ZeroFries
What are people commonly using these things for?

~~~
stadeschuldt
I have one RPi for logging temperatures in my apartment:
[http://pi.tafkas.net/temperatures/](http://pi.tafkas.net/temperatures/)

And another one is monitoring solar panels on the roof of a house:
[http://solarpi.tafkas.net](http://solarpi.tafkas.net)

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eridal
do you know where can I buy a 35$ PI 2 in the US?

All places I've tried they are ~50$

~~~
mitchell_h
[http://www.element14.com/](http://www.element14.com/) has 377 rPI2 model Bs.
All are $35+shipping.

I don't work for them in anyway, it's just where i bought my current PI.

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sparaker
I have always found banana pi to be superior in terms of value for money.

~~~
ce4
Maybe for your personal use case this is true.

However note these important things:

\- Longterm support (former models still being sold)

\- 100% backwards compatibility (RPi1/2)

\- fully open source stack including GPU driver

Broadcom's VideoCoreIV driver has been open sourced by Broadcom making the RPi
well suited for future developments like Mir and Wayland. In contrast, the
Banana Pi has a Mali GPU without a proper open source driver (lima development
seems currently halted).

ARM/Mali open source driver situation explained:
[http://libv.livejournal.com/26635.html](http://libv.livejournal.com/26635.html)

List of ARM GPUs and driver status:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-
source_graphics_d...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-
source_graphics_device_driver#ARM)

~~~
sparaker
Yes i was strictly speaking in terms of specs. You are right in this regards,
rasberry pi has much better eco system.

