One of the things I've always been impressed with was the fact that Mac OS X keeps up with the latest print drivers so that I never have to install a driver myself. It also updates automatically, as I saw when it updated my HP printer drivers a few days ago.
However, I was very confused when I couldn't access all the features of my university's Ricoh MP 3350 printer using the "Ricoh MP 3350 PS" driver included with Mac OS X. The documentation on Ricoh's website said that if I didn't see all the features, I should update my drivers.
What's confusing is that according to Apple's list of included printer and scanner software, it lists the driver for that printer as version 1.3 (this is the driver that was included with Mac OS 10.6 and the document says that it is the most recent version). The date updated for this document was June 30, 2010.
But on Apple's support site, they have a download for Ricoh printer drivers. For the specific printer I looked at, the version included after installing the updates is version 1.4 . This update was introduced August 27, 2009.
This means that there have been updated Ricoh printer drivers available for almost a year and yet they aren't being updated via Software Update. Is there anything I can do? I wanted to inform Apple somehow (much as you would do for a bug report), but I really don't know what the proper way to do that is. Or will everyone who uses Ricoh printers just have to suffer with the old drivers unless they go out and search for new ones?
However, I was very confused when I couldn't access all the features of my university's Ricoh MP 3350 printer using the "Ricoh MP 3350 PS" driver included with Mac OS X. The documentation on Ricoh's website said that if I didn't see all the features, I should update my drivers.
What's confusing is that according to Apple's list of included printer and scanner software, it lists the driver for that printer as version 1.3 (this is the driver that was included with Mac OS 10.6 and the document says that it is the most recent version). The date updated for this document was June 30, 2010.
But on Apple's support site, they have a download for Ricoh printer drivers. For the specific printer I looked at, the version included after installing the updates is version 1.4 . This update was introduced August 27, 2009.
This means that there have been updated Ricoh printer drivers available for almost a year and yet they aren't being updated via Software Update. Is there anything I can do? I wanted to inform Apple somehow (much as you would do for a bug report), but I really don't know what the proper way to do that is. Or will everyone who uses Ricoh printers just have to suffer with the old drivers unless they go out and search for new ones?