Much is being made of the small print in iLife '09's system requirements.

"GarageBand Learn to Play requires an Intel-based Mac with a dual-core processor or better" is seen by some as a sign that Apple is phasing out support for PowerPC-based Macs.

In my opinion, they're overreaching.

If you bother to read the requirements, you'll see that "iMovie requires an Intel-based Mac, Power Mac G5 (dual 2.0GHz or faster), or iMac G5 (1.9GHz or faster)" and "AVCHD video requires a Mac with an Intel Core Duo processor or better."

Some functions require more grunt than others. It's probably as simple as that.

Over time, features are added to programs and the hardware requirements go up. If you look back to iLife '06, a G4 was the minimum - 733MHz for iDVD, or 1Ghz for editing HD video.

And before that, you could run most of iLife '04 (the exceptions were GarageBand software instruments and iDVD) on a 600MHz G3.

So while you can expect to see PowerPC software gradually fade away, it makes too much sense for Apple and other vendors to keep offering it for a few years yet.

One of the attractions of the platform has always been the relative longevity of a Mac, and the youngest PowerPC systems are less than three years old.

And Apple made it very easy for developers to build applications that run on either processor family.

Sure, it looks like Snow Leopard will be Intel-only. I still think a three year old system should be able to run the latest OS, but if there's some aspect of Snow Leopard that requires hardware features missing from most pre-Intel models (OpenCL, perhaps?) then maybe drawing the line at 10.6 is the right thing to do rather than offering partial support.

When all's said and done, I can still use an old version of iMovie running under Mac OS 9 on my G3 iMac (assuming I could be bothered to plug it in) providing I'm prepared to wait a lot longer for titles and transitions to render.

Remember, "support" has several meanings. I'm less concerned about whether new software is supported on my old hardware than I am about ongoing support - especially in the form of security patches and other bug fixes - for old software.

Allowing the industry to get away with mixing up bug fixes and new features was a mistake. Bug fixes for existing software should always be offered free of charge - the supplier took your money for a flawed product, and it should be compelled to either make it good or provide a refund of the original purchase price.

If you want new features, be prepared to pay for them. But surely it isn't too much to ask that a program you purchased should work properly?

Not working with new operating systems or hardware is perhaps the software equivalent of "fair wear and tear". But an inherent fault is an inherent fault, and any customer affected by it should be entitled to redress - any assertion by a software vendor that it doesn't claim that the product will actually do anything should be treated as a fiction to be ignored.

The downside of such a scheme might be that software would be coded to only run on then-current operating systems and hardware configurations. We already see this in some low-level utilities which could cause damage if the something changed in the operating system. That could mean paying for application upgrades each time the operating system is updated and whenever you purchased a new computer.

Which situation would be most harmful to your wallet?