Epson Treats Mac Users Like Second-Class Citizens?

Robert Jung writes "Is Epson waging a coordinated discrimination effort against Mac users? MacSlash reports that Epson is refusing to honor their $50 rebate coupon if the printer was purchased at an Apple retail store, and Daily Mac notes that if you want Mac OS X drivers for Epson scanners, you must fill out a form, fork over $4, and wait for the mail to arrive -- while Windows users are able to download XP drivers for free." Apparently, Mac OS (Classic) users can also download the drivers for free. Maybe they assume Mac OS X users don't have Internet access?

Comments

Is Epson being *that* unreasonable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work for one of the Big printer mfgs (I'm still under NDA, but it is known by two initials...) in their driver development labs.

First, you'd have to be a fucking fool if you think that Epson is waging some sort of Microsoft funded war. They have everything prior to OSX on their website, so that's pretty clear.Epson is well known in the Mac world for color proofing tools, and well respected by many graphic artists I've dealt with.

The tendency at the Mac conspiracy sites is to be just as bad as the radical linux sites.

Back to my original point regarding the drivers -- OSX was, in our opinion, a horrid platform to code for. Despite the abundance of tools, we ran into flack from Apple, from irrational and mean spirited users, and had to put up with awful development tools. Management finally said something to the effect of "Fuck this" no hurry here. This was due in large part to the reaction of users.

This was about three months ago. I left my job to help my wife raise our new daughter, so this isn't a disgrunteled thing. I totally support Epson in this, though I suspect many in the Mac community will be absolutely fucking rabid.

Don't. It does more damage than you think.

Posting AC for the obvious reasons.

Re:Been seeing this in general

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple. Same reason Apple isn't racing to optimize Mac OS X for G3 Macs: the company doesn't make any more money by supporting a product you already bought.

You already own those peripherals; I already own a G3 Mac. In both cases the manufacturers have made the sale, and have little motivation to give away something which would increase the product's usefulness after the fact. They would prefer people just buy new products.

Reputation for support, you say? Hah. I'm guessing most of the peripherals in question were purchased with no guarantee of support under Mac OS X. Apple may have promised that Mac OS X itself would support G3 Macs, after many of those Macs had already been sold in fact, but they never promised it would work well.

The computer industry believes in supporting products to a bare-minimum extent. Almost no one takes responsibility for a product's long-term compatability with other products, no matter how important that is. And because this is pretty much an industry-standard practice, there's little risk for manufacturers because if people get angry at one company, they'll be stuck with the fact that the competitors are no better.

It's quite a racket.

Epson Always Supported Mac Well

[hotsauce]

Never attribute to malice that which may be explained by stupidity.

Or just an incompetently executed campaign.

Epson has always supported the Mac well. Most traditional Mac users swore by Epson in the Dark Days when everyone left but Epson continued to provide their entire product line. Most of these traditional Mac users also haven't left OS 9 so Epson hasn't had to, but give it a few months now that Photoshop 7 (for OS X) is set to appear.

Re:what problem?

[LordNimon]

Well, that's stupid. What if his apps run natively in OS X? Is he supposed to launch classic mode, relaunch his app, and then print? And what if his apps don't run in classic mode? The latest version of MS Office is only for OS X.

I have an Epson 3000 which costs a whole lot more than his printer, and I also have no idea if, or when, Epson will release OS X drivers.