Launch of the PowerPC-based Power Personals is now likely to take place in the first quarter of 1995 – We’ve always said it would be a late 1994 event and it now looks likely to be early 1995, IBM Corp chairman and chief executive Louis Gerstner said, adding that the PowerPC chip was mainly aimed at the workstation market where it had already been launched, which sounds like a veiled attempt to scale down expecations of the Power Personals; asked whether IBM would sign Microsoft Corp to write a version of Windows for the PowerPC machines, he said they would run OS/2 which is capable of supporting Windows, and dismissed remarks that Windows ran slowly on IBM computers, saying tests showed this not to be true; he confirmed that IBM was having discussions with Apple Computer Inc but declined to comment on speculation that they were studying common hardware; he said a specific problem of IBM’s personal computer business was that it did not use common parts, within the company as well as within the industry – use of more common parts would speed up the launch time of new products and make manufacturing more flexible.
