So, a Mac miracle happened recently. Not that any of you would have noticed, as it was a family miracle and not one broadcast across the net. My eldest brother after years of using a PC, decided to buy not one Mac, but two. To me, after years of using Macs and going on about how great they are...it was pleasing to know that he...well, never listened to a word I said.

This is because I should point out that his email contained two gems of info. One, that friends had been convincing him to buy a Mac. And two, he was really worried because he had all these M$ Office docs and what the heck was he going to do with those!?

At that point, I introduced my head briefly to the same wall I had been banging against for years, then realised...as I often have, that you simply can't win. I didn't feel like I had failed in preaching to convertees (those that I try to convert), because they simply don't know they need to be converted.

I think I've probably gone through 3 cheap scanners in my time as an OS X user. Not so much that I use a scanner a lot (the one next to me hasn't been turned on in over a year)...but because the fact that many of the previous scanners would only work up until a certain version of OS X.

So tonight I desperately needed to scan something. The drivers would only run in 10.3 and below...so the answer? Boot into Windows, where the drivers for this old scanner continue to be maintained and are available for XP. Phew!

And yes, the other way to look at it is that I basically had to go back to an old OS (XP) to run an old program.

Completely ignoring the launch of the New Zealand iTunes Store and online Apple store for a moment...2006 was an impressive year for Apple. With the smooth launch and transition to Intel Macs (it seems so much longer than 12 months ago that the first was released) and the promotion by Apple of products such as Parallels on your Mac, Apple is (as ever) evolving beautifully.

Then factor into the mix local news in the December launch of an iTunes Store (finally!), lower prices than we had experienced (thanks in part of the new online store), and it really has been an amazing year of Apple news and of forth-coming promise.