Some weeks ago, I bought the PIE 3650U slide scanner from Costco after carefully checking the box to be sure it was listed as Mac compatible. Mac compatibility is stated quite prominently on the packaging, although there is a caveat about the TWAIN drivers not working with Adobe products under Mac OS X 10.5.
Upon getting it home, I found Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 was bundled with the device. This version of Elements will not run on any version of Mac OS X released in the past two years. Nor will the TWAIN driver, although the latter was not a surprise. Your Web page states:
"Since the release of Apple's 10.5 Leopard OS, our drivers are no longer compatible with a direct import into Adobe Products. This is due to the new Adobe software structure and driver handling. You may use Cyberview X to scan directly into a file folder on your hard drive then open images into Adobe for editing…"
An email conversation with your tech support was not very satisfying. When I pointed out these problems, the response was that "Macintosh changes it's [sic] operating system so quick we can’t keep up with him." But, Leopard, the last major update to Mac OS X was in 2007. Moreover, the changes you mention are in Adobe products.
Since this problem should have been known for well over two years, why is it not fixed in current software? Why is there no TWAIN/SANE driver compatible with Intel-based Macs and the Leopard release of the operating system? Why isn't a modern version of Adobe Photoshop Elements being shipped with the machine?
We next consider the bundled Cyberview X software, which does work on Mac OS X Leopard, but is clearly a hasty port from the Windows version. As evidence of this, note that the "Quit" menu item—standard on the Mac—is grayed out and the "Exit" menu item—standard on Windows— is used for quitting the program. Any seasoned Mac user will be disappointed at first glance with this software because the user interface is at best confusing and clumsy, and it doesn't have the polish and feel of the other programs running beside it. Moreover, it is quite slow, probably because portions of it are running in PowerPC emulation mode and it is certainly not multiprocessor aware. This means the code probably has not been touched in three or four years because Apple has long been shipping only multi-core Intel-based Macintoshes.
This leaves third-party software. Your Web page lists SilverFast and VueScan as third-party alternatives for use with your scanners. SilverFast specifically does not support Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard. VueScan does not support the 3650U on Intel-based Mac hardware, probably because it uses your drivers. This was disappointing to me because I have been a very happy user of VueScan for years under both Mac and Linux.
If you cannot support non-Windows operating systems, I suggest you help some others develop drivers for you. For example, Hamrick Software publishes the excellent and inexpensive VueScan scanner software, mentioned above, that already supports hundreds of different scanner models under Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Or, you could give some of the open source driver projects the use of your machines and the technical specifications needed to develop for them.
I've returned this scanner to the store.
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