Columns

Look at that: a fresh new year stretching out ahead of us. Full of promise and wonder and potential. The chances are that by this time next year, there won't be a PowerPC chip in sight on Apple dealers' shelves. We'll be running a new operating system, a new version of Adobe Creative Suite, a new edition of Microsoft Office.

Or will we?

Apple's drive to own all sections of the Mac supply chain seems unabated, as evidenced by the fact that finally, after several years of non-development, Microsoft announced at the rump end of last year that it would no longer support Internet Explorer on the Mac after 31 January 2006. It recommended we all switch to Safari (although if you take a straw poll of the MacUser office, we'd actually recommend Firefox).

This is no surprise. Explorer has been

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lagging behind for years, but it's worrying to see yet another big player pushed out of a key part of the Apple market, like Adobe was with Premiere when Apple's Final Cut came along.

Who next? The local dealers? Apple has been making a play for their territory ever since it started to open Apple Stores in shopping centres nationwide.

So what can we consumers do? It's a good question, and one I'm not convinced has a good answer. I've already written in this column why I believe you should be buying from independent dealers, not Apple itself, and I'm coming around to the idea that perhaps we should be doing the same with software.

I'm starting to wonder whether sticking to Office, Mellel or Mariner's productivity tools rather than iWork, Photoshop rather than Aperture, and Firefox, Opera or Camino rather than Safari is akin to buying my veg direct from the farm, or shunning the big brands when shopping for a new pair of pumps.

Apple writes first-rate software. Really, I do admire what it has done with tools such as Final Cut, iLife and Aperture, but let's not forget that there is an alternative. Just as in Mac OS X there is an alternative to Windows, the dominant force on operating systems.

As Mac users, we have already chosen to buck the trend and support the underdog. Perhaps 2006 is the year in which we should take that philosophy to the next level.