Canon Support for Snow Leopard

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Level 6

16,705 points

Canon Support for Snow Leopard

Canon has posted their support schedule for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) for their consumer printers.

http://support-au.canon.com.au/contents/AU/EN/8200620400.html

It looks like if your product is a few years old then it is not advisable to purchase 10.6, or be ready to buy a new printer.

As for their business products, such as the imageRUNNER series, none of the current Canon printer drivers work on 10.6. Having been involved with the 10.6 seed testing I found that while the drivers appear to install okay, the creation of a network printer queue fails. This occurred with the following drivers.

CUPS PS v2.11
PS v1.81
UFR2 v1.80
Fax v2.20

So if you feel the need to update, then beware.

If your Canon device supports PostScript, then you can use either the Generic PostScript included with 10.6 or install the Canon PPDs so that you get some finishing options.

If your Canon device only supports a Canon proprietary protocol, such as UFR2, CAPT or GARO, then there is currently no solution for them with Mac OS X 10.6.

Pahu

MacBook Pro 17', Mac OS X (10.5.8), Mac Pro, Xserve G5, iPhone 3G

Posted on Aug 25, 2009 11:38 PM

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Answer 1

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,989 points

Aug 26, 2009 5:04 AM in response to PAHU

It looks like if your product is a few years old then it is not advisable to purchase 10.6, or be ready to buy a new printer.

Just because Canon says it's not supported doesn't mean it won't work just fine... We'll only know once Snow Leopard is released and someone has tried it. I've got multiple pieces of software on my Leopard machine that would technically be considered unsupported (like version 6 of Interarchy, which was released years before Leopard and is 3 versions behind the current one), and they work just fine.

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Answer 2

Aug 26, 2009 5:26 AM in response to PAHU

Isn't Snow Leopard supposed to automactically download the latest drivers for printers and scanner for you?

source - http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/

and Apple is boosting about compatibility with any connectable through USB or Bluetooth.

source - http://www.apple.com/macosx/compatibility/

I would assume having the seed tester would help work out those bugs.

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Answer 3

zcold

Level 1

0 points

Aug 26, 2009 1:05 PM in response to PAHU

At my office we have an Canon ImageClass 4370DN, drivers installed just fine. Doesnt seem to want to work over Bonjour. Going into the AddPrinter->IP->More Printers and trying to use the Canon IP (UFR II) I can enter the Ip address of the printer and I get a message saying its a complete and valid address, but it will not let me add it. Clicking Add, the window just sits there and doesnt attempt to add the printer. I am running Snow Leopard. Worked fine before the upgrade. Hopefully once its release this will be fixed.

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Answer 4

a brody

Level 10

82,941 points

Aug 26, 2009 2:40 PM in response to MapleinJapan

Only those which are modern drivers would I expect get full support. USB has had PnP support for years. But many scanners and printers lost third party driver support, and only a some of those got open source support. Basically, if compatibility of a specific peripheral is important, check the support pages on Apple, the peripheral manufacturer, and open source pages before upgrading. See my FAQ on Mac compatible software*:

http://www.macmaps.com/macosxnative.html

- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

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Answer 5

zcold

Level 1

0 points

Aug 26, 2009 4:02 PM in response to PAHU

Like the first post said, beware, support for the drivers is not there yet and most likely will not work. When 10.6 comes out tommorow, I will post more results about getting canon printers to work in snow leopard.

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Answer 6

PAHU Author

Level 6

16,705 points

Aug 26, 2009 4:19 PM in response to thomas_r.

Thomas A Reed wrote:
Just because Canon says it's not supported doesn't mean it won't work just fine... We'll only know once Snow Leopard is released and someone has tried it.

As I said, I was involved with the 10.6 seed test and I have tested a number of older Canon inkjet printers (S750, i560, iP6000D) and none of them were supported by the OS, nor did the driver supplied by Canon for 10.5 work. So the information announced by Canon seems correct. Hopefully the good folks over at Gutenprint will have drivers for these older models available soon after 10.6's release.

Pahu

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Answer 7

zcold

Level 1

0 points

Aug 27, 2009 7:42 AM in response to PAHU

At my office we have an Canon Image Class 4370DN, drivers installed just fine. Doesn't seem to want to work over Bonjour. Going into the AddPrinter->IP->More Printers and trying to use the Canon IP (UFR II) I can enter the Ip address of the printer and I get a message saying its a complete and valid address, but it will not let me add it. Clicking Add, the window just sits there and doesn't attempt to add the printer. I believe this is just a matter of canon updating their drivers, but I don't under stand why it still wont let me add..

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Answer 8

zcold

Level 1

0 points

Aug 27, 2009 8:07 AM in response to PAHU

Just spoke with canon, it seems they don't develop drivers for the release of an OS. I was told it should take about 2 weeks for the drivers to be available.

You would think they would have drivers ready for the release of an OS and not 2 weeks after..

The wait begins.

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Answer 9

Aug 27, 2009 5:42 PM in response to zcold

There is a list of available compatible drivers which may be accessed from here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3669

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Answer 10

Ham

Level 2

175 points

Aug 27, 2009 6:44 PM in response to Bruce De Benedictis

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3669

Is a list of built-in / Apple provided drivers. There are 100s of Canon models listed. Also I see many Scanners. In 10.6 Apple seems to have provided Canon driver that not only print but Scan!

It is not an exhaustive list supported models, but rather Apple Provided drivers.

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Answer 11

jpknox

Level 1

36 points

Aug 27, 2009 6:54 PM in response to PAHU

A note to everyone on this thread: When you install Snow Leopard, be sure to install Rosetta. If you have older software or drivers, they might need the Rosetta option to run. I do not know if the Rosetta install is Default or Optional on the Snow Leopard installer disks. Look for the Optional Installs and be sure Rosetta is selected.

Hope that helps. 😉

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Answer 12

Ham

Level 2

175 points

Aug 27, 2009 7:04 PM in response to jpknox

This should be Totally unnecessary. If a printer driver required Rosetta, that would be a REALY old printer driver. All major vendors updated their current models (and previous) when 10.4.3 (First Intel) was introduced. So if you have a PPC only driver, it is like for a printer that is 5, 6 or 10 years old. Maybe you should go to your fav web site and get a new $79 model that is 4x the speed and 2x the resolution.

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Answer 13

Network 23

Level 6

12,333 points

Aug 27, 2009 8:22 PM in response to zcold

zcold wrote:
You would think they would have drivers ready for the release of an OS and not 2 weeks after..

Many companies do not want to be surprised by a change made to the very final shipping build of an OS and will only ship their own stuff after running through all their tests with the build the public actually gets. They* have been burned before, and they don't want to risk their reputation if they got caught off guard by a fault not their own.

*not talking specifically about Canon here

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Answer 14

thomas_r.

Level 7

31,989 points

Aug 28, 2009 4:17 AM in response to Ham

if you have a PPC only driver, it is like for a printer that is 5, 6 or 10 years old.

LOL, nobody using Mac OS X is using drivers 10 years old. Mac OS X didn't exist ten years ago! I also wouldn't make such an assumption, given how many different printer companies are out there and how much skanky software I've seen from them. (Once, I downloaded a Canon driver that was an installer on a .dmg that was both zipped and stuffed, and the installer installed an installer that installed the driver. Absolute foolishness!)

Maybe you should go to your fav web site and get a new $79 model that is 4x the speed and 2x the resolution.

People who are using old printers with old drivers are unlikely to be using old, cheap printers.

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Answer 15

miked378

Level 1

47 points

Aug 28, 2009 7:53 AM in response to PAHU

@PAHU -- Thanks for the info! You're always on top of the Canon printer situation!

Is there a similar Canon support document for their business products? I'm interested in support for my office's ImageRunner C6870, which works great on 10.5.

Thanks!

--Mike

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