Product Development

As spending on new personal computers slows, the company synonymous with their rise, Microsoft Corp., has aggressively shifted its focus to consumer gadgetry, hoping that video game machines and high-tech televisions will keep the company on top.

Mattel Inc., Hawthorne, has promoted Jill E. Barad to the new position of executive vice president-marketing and worldwide product development. Barad, 37, previously was Mattel's executive vice president-worldwide product development.

Catherine A. Ross has been appointed sales and marketing manager for the new line of Memory Module products and John H. Gunderson has been appointed manager of new product development at Vitarel Microelectronics.

By the time June Berliner's Swatch read 7:45 on a recent Wednesday evening, the Beverly Hills woman had been pursuing Swatches for 14 hours straight. Her quest began at 6 a.m. at Bullock's in Beverly Center, when she stood in line to have first pick of "vintage" Swatches to be released that morning on a one-per-customer basis. The promo meant she and other Swatch collectors could pay the $40 face value for an older model Swatch that might fetch 10 times that much on the collectors' market.

After tiptoeing out of the long shadow of Steve Jobs this last year, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook took a giant leap into the spotlight this week. In a kind of transparency rarely practiced by his enigmatic predecessor, Cook granted a pair of candid interviews that underscored the difference in both style and substance between the two men. They also served as the latest sign of how Cook has embraced the Apple motto to "Think Different" as he methodically and quietly reshapes the culture and business of the company he inherited.