The middle of the road, usually between two extremes, is often thought to be a desirable place - offering the best of both worlds with few of the disadvantages. For example, it is this proposition that the Liberal Democrats traditionally offered the electorate; the social consciousness of the Labour movement with the commercial acumen of the Conservatives. It's a nice idea, occupying the middle of the road.

Three years ago this week, the industry had polarised into two distinct sectors; at the top was the £1000+ multimedia PC (usually a 133MHz) and at the bottom was the games consoles, Sega's Saturn and Sony's PlayStation. If you wanted to buy into 'interactive entertainment' (as some games publishers pompously insisted on calling their output), those were your choices. There was no middle-of-the-road system.

Enter the Pippin, announced this week. Based on Apple Macintosh technology, Katz Media, a subsidiary of Norwegian firm Olympia (any the wiser?) were touting the Internet-ready set-top box as, "Everything that is good about multimedia and the Internet without the complexity (and cost) associated with multimedia PCs." Scheduled for launch in Quarter 2 the following year, it would be sold through High Street consumer electronics multiples and was aimed at 'edutainment and infotainment' users who might also want to play the odd game - the traditional family with 2.4 children - for around £450. Bandai were another company who had licensed the Pippin technology from Apple for their own multimedia system, so there were high hopes for it.