So you bought a brand spanking new Apple iBook laptop. The latest and greatest of everything. You fire up Microsoft Office and hit the print button sending your 10 page document to your new Canon Printer. Nothing happens. You turn off the printer and turn it back on. Hit print. Nothing happens.
Unfortunately this is all too common when printing from OSX to a printer hosted on a Microsoft Windows box. The printer manufacturers create wonderful printer drivers if you hook up the printer directly to your Macintosh or have it connected to another Mac. If the printer is hooked up to a Windows box, too bad.
Most printer manufacturers are too lazy and just don’t care about mixed environments. Sure, you can go with a third party printer driver, but why should you have to pay another $60 just to print FROM ONE COMPUTER with no guarantee from the third party that the driver will really work? Apple needs to push the printer manufacturers to allow for printing to remote printers (Windows Shared Printers, IPP printers, etc). At best this is blatent neglect from the printer manufacturers and Apple itself.
Mister Jobs, please please prove you have the cojones to stand up for us with the printer manufacturers!
The official response from Canon? Canon recommended buying a second printer.
January 30th, 2008 at 9:53 am
[...] in March 2007, I posted about The Sad State of Mac OSX Printer Drivers. I’m sad to say that little has changed. Even noted computer experts like Leo Laporte seem [...]