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How bad were the Lisa sales when they sold 100,000-(5k-8k) at ~$10K each?

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rayarachelian:

--- Quote from: nick on June 04, 2021, 09:40:48 pm ---Photograph courtesy of John Woodall of the signed Lisa case top dated 5/30/85 of the last Lisa ever made at the bottom of the page at the link below. Sadly no serial / applenet number included.

https://guidebookgallery.org/extras/spotlights/lisa/photos/secrets

Story on discovering signatures mentioned 24-mins into the following interview with John http://www.classiccomputing.com/CCPodcasts/CC_Show/Entries/2018/1/8_ClassicComputing.com___John_Woodall_interview.html


--- End quote ---

Yeah, I was aware of this interview, like the one with Bob Cook, it's likely going to be part of the "Before Macintosh: The Apple Lisa Documentary" that David Greelish is in the process of finishing up. I do recall seeing the Lisa 1 faceplate with the gold Steve Jobs nameplate and the signatures on the last lid of the Lisa, but didn't realize that there was the serial number plate on it on Adam's site, sadly, it doesn't have enough resolution to get the AppleNet and serial # off it.

Likely the serial number will just contain the date which we already now and the number of the day which is like 300-500 or so, what we're after is the absolute highest AppleNet one since they're sequential. The serial numbers are prefixed by the date they were made and how many were made that day, so each day there's a serial #1 for what that factory made that day, but the date tells you when it was. But apparently as others have noted, the AppleNet ID is sequential.

It's possible Apple inflated the numbers, or someone somewhere misinterpreted the number by 10x which started the whole sold 100K units. Or someone may have estimated based on "Apple's factory can make 300-500 a day, the Lisa lasted for about 2 years so if they made them daily at this rate at X factories, it would add up to 100K"

I think Apple Computer Inc (not today's Apple, Inc.) was a publicly traded company back in 1982-1985, however their reports to wall street don't have a break down of how many of each computer were made/sold, but rather just total profit and total sold, so we don't know how many of those were Apple ]['s, vs Macs, vs Lisas. We do have some numbers from Folklore.org, but that's mostly for the Mac with an occasional anecdote that they expected to sell X Lisas in a year, but only managed to send Y% with that time, etc.

If anyone can find a highres photo of that LastLisaLid with that sticker where the AppleNet number is readable, that would really help us figure otu what the actual numbers are.

They all seem to start with the same 001 prefix, so if we lop that off, it would tell us the exact count. Well, it might off by some number, but it would help.

The other path we could take is that there's also a serial number inside the VSROM on every CPU board, but that's not necessarily going to tell us how many Lisas are made even if we find the last VSROM made, because like all companies, Apple Computer Inc. would have made a reservoir of spare parts, including CPU boards and VSROMs. The tech is supposed to transfer your existing VSROM to your new CPU board if your CPU board has failed, so that way the DRM'ed software on your ProFile/Widget hardrive would still work.

So if we find a VSROM with an AppleNet of 100K or 50K or 30K that would be a useful datapoint that would tell us, oh yeah, more than 10K were made. But it could also be a false data point if it was the only one and there's no matching serial number sticker with an AppleNet that high.

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