Josh Nichols

CanoScan LiDE 80 Mac drivers dead

I get really annoyed when I buy a computer accessory and after one simple upgrade, poof! it stops working. It’s was understandable when I moved from OS9 to OSX. It was whole new operating system and software had to be rewritten, so I dealt with it, but the transition from a PowerPC to an Intel processor shouldn’t be a problem. For some reason, Canon wants to make it a problem.

I had a G4 mac for a while and used Photoshop CS2 to do all of my scanning with a CanoScan LiDE 80 and it worked great. I upgraded to an Intel mac and it worked exactly the same way my G4 did. Now, I have Photoshop CS3 and the scanner no longer woks. I tried getting new drivers from Canon, but they haven’t updated them since Feb. 2006. I then searched and searched the internet for answers and found one that recommends running CS3 in Rosetta mode, then the driver works. This means Canon hasn’t updated the driver to run natively on an Intel processor. I’m not going to run it in Rosetta mode because it’s slow. I wanted CS3 because it would run natively on an Intel Mac.

This annoyed me so I emailed Canon support for an answer. The answer I got pretty much guaranteed Canon lost me as a customer. They gave me two “solutions:”

• Run Photoshop in Rosetta mode.
• Buy a new scanner through their upgrade program.

Those pretty much sound like non-solutions to me. The part that really irked me was that they’ve updated the CanoScan LiDE 80 drivers to work with Windows Vista but they can’t seem to make a universal binary Mac driver. Also, my wife has an LiDE 60 and that scanner (which is identical to mine, minus the 35mm film scanning) has updated drivers.

I tried using the CanoScan Toolbox software, but it has no preview or scanning options. I tried using Apple’s Image Capture software, but it never finds my scanner — even in Rosetta mode. So, I’m stuck using Photoshop CS2 for my scanning until I find a new scanner.

Good job Canon! Your products may get good reviews, but computer accessories are only as good as their driver support and your support leaves a lot to be desired. You’ve let me know exactly how you feel about your Mac customers and the next time I need a computer accessory, I’m going with a different brand. In fact, when I get around to getting a new digital camera, I’m going with Nikon.

Update: I just checked Epson’s driver downloads to install an old scanner we have at work and guess what? They have Leopard support. They still require you to run Photoshop in Rosetta mode to scan in Photoshop, but at least they have a stand-alone scanning app that works. So, I guess my next scanner is an Epson!