You may have gotten the impression that I’m not a complete convert to the camp of Apple, and this is true. I continue to run Linux (both Gentoo and Ubuntu) and at some point I’ll get windows installed on the laptop again so that I can run the few windows apps that I still haven’t found a replacement for.

Last night, Erin brought out the scanner. Expecting it to “Just Work™” I told her to plug it in and see what happens. As it turns out, nothing happened. Ok, no big deal, I’ll just go to the Canon website and download the drivers and software. Joy of joys, they have Intel OSX drivers and software listed. I downloaded. I tried to install the software. I got permissions errors. I tried to install the drivers. I got permission errors. I found out which directory it was failing on, changed the permissions, and got the software to install (note that the software has to be installed before the driver.) I still haven’t gotten the driver to install though. Apparently Apple’s modern OS approach has been to throw out backwards compatibility as a target. These drivers which were for OS X.1 or X.2 or X.3 will not install on OS X.4. Oh well.

Here’s the kicker. Erin plugged it in to the laptop (running Ubuntu) and it “Just Worked”

Simpson’s quote of the day: “It may not be glamarous, but it’s good, honest work.” - Apu