I'm pushing hard to get this in before the issue goes out, so I won't say much now, but at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, John Sculley outlined Apple's plans for the consumer electronics field in his keynote address. From the sounds of it, Apple considers the consumer electronics market the third phase in Apple's overall plan, the first two being to increase the number of Macs out there (with the low cost Macs) and to increase enterprise presence, which means dealing with IBM. The products that will start appearing in the second half (read: Christmas) of 1992 include a new line of CD-ROM-based desktop Macs, one for us normal technoweenies and one for the consumer market. I wonder how a CD/Mac will compare to Commodore's CDTV, which is really an Amiga in video game clothing. The more interesting products will be a bit further on, but are what Apple calls "Personal Digital Assistants" (PDAs). PDAs are specific beasts, and will have specific tasks, like electronic note-taking, videophones, and personal communicators. I suspect that Apple's been paying attention to what Xerox 's "ubiquitous computing" theories, and General Magic and Sony will be involved as well. I'll try to find more information about this at Macworld.

Information from:
Mark H. Anbinder -- mha@baka.ithaca.ny.us