Quite a lot. Most OEM's included it on their 2000-2005 desktops. Notably Dell, Sony, IBM/Lenovo, and Gateway. It was more prevalent on their portable computers than their desktops. Intell had a few boards with it as did ASUS. Even cable TV boxes have the option of FireWire.
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Fusion drive for PPC machines
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Quite a lot. Most OEM's included it on their 2000-2005 desktops. Notably Dell, Sony, IBM/Lenovo, and Gateway. It was more prevalent on their portable computers than their desktops. Intell had a few boards with it as did ASUS. Even cable TV boxes have the option of FireWire.
Quite a few, but even still if we ask the average home user what Firewire is, the likelihood unless they own a digital video recorder is that they would never have even heard of what Firewire was even if there motherboard had a firewire port on it.
Maybe Dell, Gateway, IBM/Lenovo, and Sony is different in Australia, but IEEE 1394 was on about 60% of their lineups on the first half of the 2000's. Most end users knew and still know what an IEEE 1394 port is. Even if they call it "that strange thing that connects to my microphone/hard drive/cable box/camera". It's well known to many in the US.
Well, the alternative is live with slow performance, no space or waste time doing manual data movement yourself.
Given that everyone should have a backup in case of failure/theft/etc anyway, I (and I'm sure apple, as well) see the increased failure rate as an acceptable trade-off.
I've worked in and around IT for nearly 15 years now, a lot of that time with Windows PCs, plenty of Mac users know Firewire like the back of their hand, however in building PCs I've come to realise I've seen 1 maybe 2 firewire ports on most motherboards. Off the shelf/store bought PCs with propitiatory motherboards manufactured by specific brands, this may be a different case it's nothing I've really dealt with because it's the exception not the norm unless you're working where corporate support is needed that most of these grey box PC suppliers sell complete and utter junk that does the job just well enough to keep their tech support in a job, but not well enough not to frustrate the living daylights out of yourself.
The couple of industries where I've seen firewire come up often is in audio for desks and mixers, video conversion, capture and reccording devices and high speed data transfer where reliability is valued over flash in the pan "bursty" buses like USB.
That said, USB3 and Thunderbolt have gone and changed the game again.
Here's your problem.
Most consumers do not build their own computer. In the early 2000's they would have gotten a catalog from Dell/HP/IBM/Lenovo/Gateway and looked at their options. They then would have called them up and placed their order along with any BTO options. 60% of those mass production computers had IEEE 1394 built in. When looking at it from this prospective, one could come to the conclusion that non-mainstream was to not have an IEEE 1394 port on one's computer.
Most consumers do not build their own computer. In the early 2000's they would have gotten a catalog from Dell/HP/IBM/Lenovo/Gateway and looked at their options. They then would have called them up and placed their order along with any BTO options. 60% of those mass production computers had IEEE 1394 built in. When looking at it from this prospective, one could come to the conclusion that non-mainstream was to not have an IEEE 1394 port on one's computer.
Of this I'm fairly well aware... On another interesting tidbit we don't have the same regulations here in Australia that cable TV boxes must come with a firewire port if requested.