Prior to printing with my new Mac Mini, my Mac experience had been frustrating (Monitor didn’t work) and slightly disappointing (my mac isn’t all it’s cracked up to be). Nevertheless, I still maintained some high hopes for this guy. After all, I hate to admit I’m wrong, and I was beginning to believe that OSX was possibly superior, and I had definitely spent a lot of time in hopeful anticipation of the Mini after I ordered it. After successfully connecting to some shared folders and even printers on a Windows network, I was beginning to think that most of the old Mac incompatibilities were history. (Excepting, of course, the fact that my LCD monitor does not work with my mac!)

I had made it through an entire day with the Mini, getting some work done, getting OpenOffice installed, and squinting at my 2″-smaller replacement monitor. It was nearing time to leave, and I just had to print out a 1-page .pdf file. The networked printer (a pretty fancy multipurpose copier with all the options) had been “installed”, and so I let ‘er rip.

I make it to the copy room, and some jerk has this huge job printing out… I wait for it to finish, but my .pdf doesn’t show. Hmm…I examine the huge job a little more closely. It appears that it’s one page with some gibberish about Adobe-pdf-something-or-other, and about 35 blank pages. Wait a minute, that’s my PDF! (A little devil pops into my head, saying “Hi, I’m a Mac!” and laughing)

I trek back to my computer, remembering how easy it was to make that printer work with my PC when I installed it, and headed off to the manufacturer’s website. They’ve got some file there that’s a psuedo-driver for OSX, and so I download it, and go to install it.

Hmm, that’s odd, this weird .hqx file doesn’t seem to have a file association. Wait, OSX doesn’t include an extraction utility for zipped (bin-hexed, if you want to be precise) files! Even Windows XP does that! So much for out-of-the-box usefullness. Now I’ve got to go to some other website and download and install Stuffit Expander. By this time I’m cursing the day Steve Jobs was born–but wait, then Bill Gates wouldn’t have had all those great ideas to steal and make practical.

So I install Stuffit Expander, install the PPD or PDD or whatever file it is, and reconfigure my printer. Finally, some productivity will occur! I hit “print”, and run over to the copy room.

You guessed it, more gibberish, and 35 more blank sheets. <sigh> No wonder no one in the corporate world outside of artists uses OSX. I finish my day by opening the .pdf on my PC and printing it out.

Score:
PC:3
Mac:-1