FujiXerox, one of the highly reputed manufacturer of desktop printers. Who would have thought that something so shameful like this can happen to it? My desktop laser printer was nothing more than a hunk of heavy doorstopper for more than a quarter of a year. So what exactly happened?
A Brief History In Time
For as long as I have been in the digital photography and imaging business, I have always had an Epson printer. Not just any old Epson printer, but a desktop Epson inkjet photo printer. Its main purpose was mainly to print photographic images on coated inkjet photo papers. Quick to output, and quality comparable to those of a commercial colour lab print.
Yes, in the early 2000’s, Epson was the king of the photographic quality inkjet print. Advertising propaganda aside, any low-end Epson desktop inkjet photo printer can give any of its competitors a run for their money.
But as time went on, printing photographic quality images became less of a priority over printing documents. And if you know anything about maintaining inkjet printers, you will also know that if you don’t run your printers regularly (preferably daily), you will end up with clogged nozzles. Cleaning clogged nozzles involve forcefully squirting ink out of the clogged nozzles, which consumes valuable ink in the process. So whether you print with it or not, you are already using the expensive inks on a regular basis.
It wasn’t long before I finally gave in, and decided to switch to a more cost friendly, and almost maintainence-free, black-only, laser printer. With so many players out there in the laser printer market, my instincts pointed me towards FujiXerox. What other better choice than the direct descendent of Xerox, the king of photocopy and laser printing technology itself?
Enter The FujiXerox P205 b Desktop Printer
As I examined my needs of a new printer, all I ever wanted was a reliable laser printer that will stand up to the irregular interval of usage, and still print properly when I needed it to. I have very little need for printing photographic quality images at that point. And if I do, I would simply outsource it. So I ended up with a very simple requirement, of a simple A4 size, minimum feature, black-only, laser printer.
What drew me towards the FujiXerox P205 b printer was that it met all of my needs, and at a very attractive price too. That plus the fact that what could possibly go wrong with a reputable brand like FujiXerox in the laser printer market, right?… Wrong!…
The Good Old Days
I have been an Apple Macintosh user for more than a decade already. And as most Mac users know, once you go Mac, you don’t go back. And one good thing about the Mac platform is that it can work with every conceivable device that you can plug into it. The Operating System itself in intelligent enough to detect the device that is plugged into it, and automatically download the latest driver direct from the manufacturer. All these done without the conscious knowledge of the user at all… Unless such a driver does not exist in the first place!…
Up to that point, I have been using the FujiXerox for a couple of problem-free years already. And I expected it to remain that way. After all, Macintosh and FujiXerox, these are reputable brands that instills the image of quality products and customer service.
Rising Of The Dark Times
On the 30th of September 2015, I was as ecstatic as a little kid on Christmas morning, when OS X (Pronounced “Oh-Ess-Ten”) version 10.11, El Capitan was finally released for the public. After all, version after version of OS X released brought a faster interface, better stability, and not to mention many new features that we can only dream about in the years before.
After updating it, and using it for a while, I was as happy as I could be. It’s almost as good as buying a brand new computer. But when the need to print something came up, I found that it was giving cryptic error messages. My first instinct was that something in the printer must be broken.
But before start tearing it apart (warranty was already expired at this point) and see if there is anything that I can fix (as if I can fix anything at all), I tried hooking it up to my wife’s Windows (Ugghh!…) computer. And to my amazement, it actually worked!…
So into the users’ forums I went, and combed through anything I can find about the problematic connection between my Mac and the FujiXerox P205 b printer. I found out almost immediately that everybody who has the same OS-printer combination shared the same problem as I did.
So I started looking into FujiXerox’s official website, and see if there’s a driver that I can manually download (very un-Mac-like), so that my printer can work. Alas, there was none. And all I can find there is that they are working on coming up with a new driver for El Capitan, and that it will be available in December 2015 (it was early November 2015 at this point). I was angry, but I was cool with it, I can live without printing anything for a month longer. The most important thing is that they acknowledge the problem, and that they’re working on it.
Tarnishing Of A Reputation
I was checking on the notice regularly, eagerly awaiting for the December deadline to approach. By late November 2015, and a quick look at the notice on the website, the December 2015 deadline has been moved to January 2015. Arrgghh!… What on earth is happening?…
At this point, I was half expecting that they will move the goal-post again come January 2016.
In the meantime, all the documents in the printing queue (the physical one, not the printer driver queue) couldn’t wait anymore. I had to borrow my wife’s Windows computer once more, just to get the documents printed.
The Day Of Awakening Cometh
And today, as I randomly check back to the FujiXerox notice, half expecting the deadline to be delayed to February 2016, I found that something changed. No, they didn’t announce that the driver was finally available. Just that the English version of the notice suddenly changed to Korean. Something must have happened… Hmm…
So I poked around to see of OS X Version 10.11 was available on their driver download page. Lo and behold, it was available there. No official announcement, no apology, no fanfare, nothing… It just happened to be there when it wasn’t the last I checked.
I downloaded it, and powered up my printer… Voila!… It works!…
I’m happy… But still angry…
FujiXerox, What Happened To You?
The OS X El Capitan’s developers’ beta was released on 8th June 2015, a good four months before the final public release. One would have thought that the good people at FujiXerox would have jumped on the opportunity to work on the driver’s compatibility then… But nothing happened…
Then the public beta was made available on 9th July, another good three months before the final public release… Again, nothing happened…
When the public version was finally released on 30th September, everybody would have expected that every vendor would have had more then enough time to make sure that their devices work seamlessly with the newly released OS X… Every vendor except FujiXerox…
Today, more than three months after public release of OS X El Capitan, I finally got the proper driver to link my P205 b printer with my computer. And that is also because occasionally I kept looking back at their notice page. Whatever happened to public announcements? Whatever happened to a list of registered users who faced the problem? Whatever happened to publicly acknowledging that you have a problem with the drivers? WHAT IF I DIDN’T CHECK BACK???…
And I shudder to think that this whole fiasco will repeat itself with the launch of OS X version 10.12, expected later this year.
Shame on you, FujiXerox!…
