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Epson Treats Mac Users Like Second-Class Citizens?

Posted by pudge on from the they-are-just-jealous dept.

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?

3 of 57 comments (clear)

  1. Re:what problem? by dewhite · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's all true, but I'm still a little burned by the fact that they still haven't produced drivers for my epson 1160 wide format printer. It's really important to the work I do sometimes, so for now I have to export my documents to a win2k machine to print on large format paper such as 11x17. Oh well, maybe someday...

    --
    -dewhite
  2. Re:Is Epson being *that* unreasonable? by wbajzek · · Score: 2, Interesting
    In the early days of OS X, I saw a lot of developers saying stuff like, "MacOS X is a horrible platform for developers" and "It's so difficult to program for, that it could be years before our product is released."

    In many of those cases, I've seen the same developer come out later touting how easy it was to write software for OS X. In rarer cases (Connectix), they've actually admitted that the difficulty was not the platform so much as their ignorance of it.

    I just think it's interesting.

  3. Re:Epson Always Supported Mac Well by marktwain · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Good comment. Epson has always supported the Mac platform well, going back to the 1980's.

    The first printer I owned for an Apple ][+ in 1981 was an Epson. It was less expensive than the Apple model and twice the quality.

    Epson is a good deal bigger now than they were back then. If a Mac user writes their tech support (my one experience in late 2000) you get back a form letter email suggesting that (your problem, whatever it is) is likely due to an extensions conflict .

    But a followup email gets decent results. Tedious but they're a big company. They were fast off the mark when OS X shipped. HP took forever and I don't care what the ignorant excuse was that posted in a different thread by a former HP employee. Epson was there with drivers for most consumer printers day one.

    Big companies do indeed do stupid and ignorant things from time to time. They all do. Name one that hasn't. Epson of all printer manufacturers supports the Mac best. Other devices I'm not as certain about. But Epson printers I know.