General Category > LisaList2
How bad were the Lisa sales when they sold 100,000-(5k-8k) at ~$10K each?
rayarachelian:
Based on this: https://lisalist2.com/index.php/topic,185.0.html it looks like the real number is <10K, possibly much smaller, but we'd need more serial numbers to figure this out. Thanks to @bluesnowkitty for this 2nd thread.
I don't recall where I got 100K from, likely it would have been from an earlier wikipedia article or some other source. Sorry, at some point I recall looking it up and thinking, wait, if there were 100K at $10K@ then Apple had gross sales of $1B. But if I misremembered or if in the meanwhile the numbers were updated this obviously the gross was ~$100,000,000 which is 2x the R&D but doesn't account for the materials, so profit could well have been negative especially since the tail end was sold off to SunRem and also destroyed.\
Googling around, this article has the 100K number: https://www.inexhibit.com/case-studies/different-fate-apples-lisa-macintosh-design-matters/
Randomly going back in time to ~2017 yielded a wikipedia article that stated 100,000: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Apple_Lisa&oldid=778768096
In reference #1 on this revision, it points to http://oldcomputers.net/lisa.html as the source of the sales number, but that page on Old Computers doesn't say where it got it from, only "
Sales did pick-up, but Apple discontinued the Lisa line with 100,000 units sold after 2 years. By this time, the popular (and cheaper) Macintosh line of computers was available, of which Apple sold 70,000 in the first 3 months. "
So this indicates that the 100K number was floating around there for a while - but ofc not whether or not it's correct.
Anyone know if Apple's reports to Wall Street in 1983, 1984, 1985 mention Lisa sales numbers? (or where to even find these?)
This would also mean a couple of things in the form of a double edged sword:
1. for people who want Apple Lisas, they're far more rare, therefore far more expensive (especially due to the M1 money supply printing due to covid and thus ultra-inflation), and
2. for people who own Lisas, please take good care of them, they're worth a lot more when you sell them.
* I used ultra-inflation rather than hyperinflation (as hyper would indicate a higher order) because the USA isn't quite yet at hyperinflation yet, let's hope we don't go there as that would mean collapse of empire similar to what the USSR saw, and the coming of evils of the great reset where you'll rent everything, own nothing and have zero privacy.
rayarachelian:
Amazon moved the release date for John Couch's book to July 13, 2021. (For a while it had said "May 7" then on that day it went to "out of stock" and then was June something.)
rayarachelian:
So today I ran across an article that DTC collected in his papers about the Logan burial saying that 2700 went into the dump, and another 5000 went to SunRem (on consignment).
I also ran across: http://www.classiccomputing.com/CCPodcasts/CC_Show/Entries/2012/1/15_ClassicComputing.com___Bob_Cook_interview.html where Bob Cook confirms he received 7000 Lisas on consignment and he didn't have much room and wound up storing some in a beekeeper's warehouse.
From the interview, Bob Cook said "Apple required complete systems to be destroyed" and left him with systems that were broken or were missing keyboards which is really sad.
So looking at our experiment with the AppleNet numbers, if ~10K is the number made, then that leaves ~2300 that Apple managed to sell on their own. Sun Rem was left with close to 3000. So yeah, Bob managed to do what Apple couldn't so for sure, sales wise, was a total flop for Apple.
Eventually John Woodall of VintageMicros bought the remaining stock (and that included the Steve Jobs faceplate one that Bob Cook mentioned was used as a template to make a Lisa 1 faceplate for the "Pirates of Silicon Valley" movie - the Lisa that Gates rolled around):
http://vintagemicros.com/catalog/jobs-lisa-front-panel-p-125.html
So basically the world supply of Lisas is now far less than 7000, many of those were probably thrown out by their owners.
Apple Confidential 2.0 says on page 83 of their timeline that there was a base of 60,000 units.
Page 80 says "Apple officially discontinued the Macintosh XL, nee Lisa, on April 29, 1985, and the last Lisa rolled off the assembly line at the Carrollton, Texas, factory on May 15"
Would be really neat if we can locate that very last Lisa made on May 15, 1985 and get its AppleNet ID as that would tell us the total, but most likely that one may have wound up in the landfill.
nick:
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
blusnowkitty:
--- 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
--- End quote ---
I was looking for that, I knew there was a high-res picture of that! It appears that at one time, that lid had a serial number sticker on it. http://adam.trideja.com/Apple%20Computer%20Pics/Lisa/LastLisaLid.jpg
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