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.<p>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!
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.<p>Very useful things, and the progress made is wonderful.
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?
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.<p>The Pi stands on the shoulders of a giant on top of a pyramid of giants.