"Bill Gates yesterday unveiled two new technologies, Freestyle and Mira, designed to beef up the capabilities of the PC - and hence, Windows XP - in the home. Both are intended to let users wander around the room or house while controlling their PC; Freestyle is categorised as a set of extensions to XP, while Mira is to all intents and purposes a CE-based thin client. Freestyle seems essentially to be a mechanism for extending the consumer PC into a combo media centre, jukebox and TV, so is being supported by consumer PC manufacturers such as HP, NEC and Samsung. Mira is somewhat more ambitious, and appears to slot in between Freestyle and the Tablet PC. It's described as a "new set of Windows CE.NET-based technologies," and the bottom line is that it enables smart flat panel displays which you can carry around and use for browsing and control purposes." Read the rest of the report at TheRegister, or at C|Net News.

I made some price comparisons this evening following the release of the new iMac. So, here is what I discovered, by trying to build an "iMac"-like PC (I targetted the configuration of the middle range iMac which sells at $1500), consulting prices from PriceWatch & PriceGrabber. The mentioned prices are retail and the individual components probably have costed even less for Apple, but I am going to overlook that and give the benefit to Apple. Update: Some good comments and further clarifications on the subject, can be found here. Update2: And speaking of eMachines (whose quality is not bad, neither the company is out of business (yet)), check out their brand new systems and prices. They even prepare for sale a NorthWood P4 system at 2Ghz. NorthWood is the new P4 CPU model which is much faster than its P4 predessesor at the same clock speed.

So, the big weapon that Apple was highly touting are indeed the new iMacs. Previous low end models were in the price range of $1000, but the new price range of iMacs will start at $1300 USD and goes up to $1800 USD. The specs:

700 MHz G4, 128MB RAM, 40GB drive, CD-RW - $1,299 (available March)

700 MHz G4, 256MB RAM, 40GB drive, DVD/CD-RW - $1,499 (available February)

800 MHz G4, 256MB RAM, 60GB drive, SuperDrive (DVD burn) - $1,799 (available January)

All iMacs will feature a GeForce2MX graphics chipset and the two high-end models include Pro Speakers. To the dissapointment of lots of OSNews readers (judging from our comment's section), the 15" LCD monitor only does 1024x768 (by design, good quality LCDs can deliver easily higher resolutions to this screen size - unlike CRTs which are more bound to the screen size). Get the latest info and detailed information from Steve Jobs' keynote at MacMinute and C|Net News. Our Take: This was over hyped all last week. ZDNews reported that Apple has not hyped anything in such a way ever, and they should have introduced something revolutionary. Apple should not have hyped these new products so much, as they are just a more modern & futuristic revision of an existing product. I am dissapointed in the way they tried to manipulate the crowd. Also, the entry level iMac has a ridiculously small amount of memory and no DVD playback. And it does not even meet my $1000 budget to buy the low-end machine Apple has to offer. I am dissapointed with Apple for more than one reason.

TimeCanada was "kind enough" (someone could say that they have screwed up, and they now link their index page to Time.com - but we know a few tricks of our own to link to the 'right page' which they try to hide) to write a story about Apple's new iMac, that is supposed to be revealed tomorrow during Steve Jobs' keynote speech at MacWorld SF. At this writing, the article is still up but hidden from the front page of TimeCanada, and the date on the article is January 14, 2002. If the article will be taken down, visit Slashdot for details and lots of comments. Our Take: I am personally very dissapointed, if this is indeed the "big secret" that Apple was keeping and was hyping enormously all week. Firstly, I was waiting for something else as the "secret weapon" than an iMac update (no matter if this update may be big), and as I read in the article, while it does not give any hardware specs except the fact that the new iMac will have DVD burning capabilities, the prices start at $1300 up to $1800 USD for the highest model, and that $1300 is $300 more than the previous low-end iMac model. I do not care about DVD burning (I only want playback) and even if the new iMac can do.. coffee, simply put, this is just too expensive for me, as I was expecting to buy a new G4-based iMac for $999 as I wrote recently. Plus, the new iMac looks like an egg (that's not necessarily bad though :). Update: Updated link and many pictures of the new iMac.

"So what is the deal with these Java guys? We get more than our fair share of personally-challenged individuals in this industry and many seem to hoard around some new mega-hype technology. Based on very little, these individuals crusade as to how this new way revolutionizes everything that came before. They ridicule anything that doesn't fit into their new model, mock the intelligence of anyone who disagrees and feel they can occupy the moral high ground. This is not an anti-Java article. Many of us have seen all this before, lived through it and even partaken in many of the crusades as the rally calls are made. Can the same be said of other engineering principles? Do bridge or airplane designers start a new crusade every few years, demanding all old bridges and aeroplanes were rubbish and should be pulled down and replaced with virtual bridges or virtual airplanes?" Read the rest of the editorial at Angrycoder.

Sony, Toshiba and IBM have reached a basic agreement on jointly developing a new operating system to be released in 2005 for computers capable of high-speed Internet connections. The OS will allow personal computers and home appliances to exchange huge volumes of data, including the high-resolution graphics of a television screen, through a broadband connection.