Thomas A Reed wrote:
Third-parties have no excuse for playing "catch-up," since betas of Snow Leopard have been available to them for at least six months.
Regarding printer companies in particular, the "excuse" (if you want to call it that) is often more financial than technical because they produce so many different printer models over a few years time. Obviously, when a new OS nears release the potential workload of the company's programming staff increases dramatically. Since good programmers don't typically work cheap, the company may not be able to justify maintaining a staff large enough to produce drivers for all those printers as quickly as its customers would like, so they prioritize development according to anticipated demand, installed base, etc.
With the economy as it has been, &
two major OS upgrades in the works (Windows 7 & Snow Leopard), I would imagine this is a major reason for playing "catch-up," especially for companies like Epson that have seen double digit declines in income over the last year or more.