GiftBITS/12-Dec-96

Welcome to our 1996 gift issue! This is a special issue of TidBITS, so it falls outside of our normal distribution schedule and has no sponsors. We’ve long made a habit of publishing an article in mid-December with holiday gift suggestions from TidBITS readers. We’re continuing the tradition this year, with the added bonus of deals on a number of the products mentioned. We were planning on publishing these gift ideas as an article in a regular issue of TidBITS, but we received so many suggestions that there simply wasn’t going to be room.

All of the items within were suggested by readers, and a number of items received multiple votes, which is amazing considering the number of TidBITS readers and the wide variety of products available for the discerning Macintosh user.

When possible, we tried to get some sort of a deal on the products suggested to help make this holiday season a bit easier on the bank account. We can’t guarantee that the deals we’ve found are the lowest possible prices, but we imagine that they will be pretty good in most cases. If you find a lower price, give yourself a gold star and take advantage of it.

We’ve tried to group the gift suggestions into rough categories below, but since some of them proved difficult to categorize, I recommend at least skimming all the sections in case there’s something in an unexpected place.

Finally, on an administrative note, TidBITS will not be published on 23-Dec-96 or 30-Dec-96. Tonya and I always take these last two issues in the year off to visit family for Christmas, and Geoff enjoys a few weeks with minimal telephone calls. Whatever your plans for the time, we hope you enjoy the last few weeks of 1996. [ACE]