Review of the Week, January 6-10
Traditionally, the week post-Christmas is for a post-mortem of retail sales. Instead, the buzz was the amazing deal between Apple and Next. But what was more amazing? The huge price, largely in lovely cash? Steve Jobs tucking into the prodigal's fatted calf? Or Apple's decision that its OS future lay in a Unix variant that was at its most fashionable when Curiosity Killed The Cat were topping the chart? Who? Quite.
On Tuesday we reported that 56K modems could actually have some benefit on the upstream channel too. Hmm, maybe not just for the Net then.
Wednesday was MMX day. Like the launch of the channel tunnel, 1984, or, well, the arrival of Windows 95, by the time the thing was finally on show and formally announced everybody was tired of talking about it. The fact that this actually looks a much hotter chip than originally expected may also have something to do with it. After all, what sort of story is: "Intel delivers great chip, better than expected on all counts"? Surely Intel hasn't deliberately been herding corporates towards Pentium Pro even though it knew MMX wasn't really just for games...
Meanwhile, Apple said it would release a new OS inside 12 months and maintain System 7 for at least a few more revs. Quite clear then.
The week ended with plentiful MMX systems.
If this is an example of the year to come, it's going to be busier than ever.