Apple Computer Inc will close its Sacramento Operations Center printed circuit board assembly plant in Elk Grove, California by the end of the year, and lay off 250 people. It will continue to employ 750 people in Elk Grove in a related facility that assembles, tests and distributes its Macintosh computers.
Cirrus Logic Inc’s PCSI subsidiary has introduced two new chip sets for wireless personal communications devices. Volume shipments of both its new Personal HandyPhone System chip set and its new pACT personal Air Communications Technology chip set will be available in the first half next year, with samples out as early as next quarter.
US West Inc lost its court bid to block Time Warner Inc’s $7,500m purchase of Turner Broadcasting System Inc, and will not appeal.
There is a conspiracy of silence over the Year 2000 Problem because no major corporation wants to be seen to be financially exposed to the millennial black hole, so Phoenix-based Viasoft Inc can only say it has won a $10.5m contract for its Operation 2000 data conversion software from an undisclosed major US financial institution.
IBM Corp clearly gave Phil Hester a mission impossible when it made him plenipotentiary over harmonization of components and subsystems between IBM’s constantly warring product divisions, and it looks as if it gave James Firestone another mission im possible when it hired him last August with a brief to get IBM people excited about the consumer market. The Wall Street Journal has been reviewing progress and finds that the Aptivas have picked up a few minor consumery features, but fewer than those that come with home machines from other majors.
Complete with the brutal saw mark in the side of the box that identifies it as a cut-out? We hear Microsoft Corp’s ill-fated Bob is piled high in the bargain bins of software stores at about 50 cents.
