Best all-in-one inkjet printer for Mavericks 10.9.3

What is the best printer for Mavericks 10.9.3. My old Canon Pixma 500 won't work with Mavericks and I see some of the newer Epson printers has compatibility issues. I am not a fan of HP which seems to be the main printer that Apple is offering on its website.

What kind of issues are you having? The Canon site auto detected my 10.9 install and suggests that the driver may be provided by Apple. Have you tried going to the Printer and Scanner preference pane and adding the printer from there?

If you select OS 10.7 from the Canion site drivers are shown for that printer. The 10.7 driver probably works with 10.9.

BTW if you add the printer through the Printer/Scanner preference pane do that with the printer connected. Otherwise I don't think it will find the printer.

Interesting because when I contacted Canon technical support directly they said that the Canon Pixma 500 is too old to be supported with driver updates for Mavericks. My Samsung Laser also just died. So I'm in need of a printer. Don't care for HP. Epson seems to indicate there may be loss of functionality with OS X 10.9 I'm running 10.9.3

Well try this. Should as Sly suggested come up with drivers automatically.


Canon U.S.A. : Support & Drivers : PIXMA MP500

Exactly. That's the page that auto detected my Mavericks installation.

@OP My Canon Pixma MP 990 works well under 10.9.4. I had the drivers in place before updating to Mavericks. I don't remember for sure but may have reinstalled the driver since moving to Mavericks. If I did I used the Printer/Scanner preference pane.

i am using an Epson XP-610 with no issues running 10.9.4.

Thanks all. However, for the Pixma 500 this is the message I get on the Canon link when I click on drivers after selecting Mavericks 10.9

There is no driver for the OS Version you selected. The driver may be included in your OS or you may not need a driver.

When I called Canon they said no drivers available for Mavericks for the MP Pixma 500.

So, unless Canon tech support doesn't know what they are talking about, I'm in the market for a new printer. Am wondering what printers folks might recommend.
Thanks

lwebster said:

What is the best printer for Mavericks 10.9.3. My old Canon Pixma 500 won't work with Mavericks and I see some of the newer Epson printers has compatibility issues. I am not a fan of HP which seems to be the main printer that Apple is offering on its website.

Click to expand...

Well, why not just buy a new Canon - last spring, I purchased the Pixma MX922 mainly because I wanted AirPrint to use wirelessly w/ our iPads - installed fine on my iMac (now running OS 10.9.4) cabled via USB - now only $100 on Amazon (must be about to be D/C?) - my only complaint (other than the cost on ink!) is its slowness which seems to be a plague w/ all of these multi-cartridge ink jet printers. Dave
.

Printer manufacturers always quit "supporting" their printers when they hit 2 yrs old.
That does not mean they won't work - they're just not going to assist you.

lwebster said:

Thanks all. However, for the Pixma 500 this is the message I get on the Canon link when I click on drivers after selecting Mavericks 10.9

There is no driver for the OS Version you selected. The driver may be included in your OS or you may not need a driver.

When I called Canon they said no drivers available for Mavericks for the MP Pixma 500.

So, unless Canon tech support doesn't know what they are talking about, I'm in the market for a new printer. Am wondering what printers folks might recommend.
Thanks

Click to expand...

That's why I suggested plugging the printer in and trying to add it through the Printer/Scanner System Preferences. When I ran through the site I used the Pixma 500 as the printer I wanted drivers for.

Before you spend good money on a new printer try the suggestions from my previous post. If the printer doesn't load throughout the printer/svanner preference pane try the 10.7 driver from the Canon site. With many printers drivers from previous OS versions still work if the OS is recent enough.

Thanks all. I did try locating the driver through system preferences and it says "software for this printer is not available from Apple. So, I will try the previous driver versions on the Canon website but based on what Canon told me, they have not updated the drivers and don't plan to do so since the Pixma 500 is 6+ years old. Its been a great work horse.

Thanks for the other suggestions. Will look into Epson and Canon Pixma MX 922 Probably time to upgrade anyway as I would like ADF for scanning.

I'm not sure they are the best judge of this unfortunately. My Pixma MP 990 dates back to about 2010 and works well with Mavericks. The previous model MP 980 dates to at least 2009 and probably works as well since it can use the same driver.

Edit: I missed it when I looked last night but the Gutenprint Printer Drivers have the MP500 listed as a supported printer. Support is listed as Experimental. In there terminology that generally means there may be an occasional bug or not all features fully supported yet. I've used their drivers before and had them perform as well as there Canon driver.

Note: IIRC the "experimental" designation can also mean that it has some features enabled that the Canon driver does not typically have enabled,

I found a YouTube video on how to rid OS Mavericks of Canon printer/scanner software, and revert to OS Lion drivers and utilities. Unfortunately it didn't work with my MP450, and MP Navigator is now non-functional. This is turn led me to looking for a new Canon Multifunction machine, and I take note of the suggestions in this thread.

Two things:
1. I have learned the hard way that OS updates are not always a good thing
2. I wonder why Mac users don't partition their HDs to accommodate two - or more - OS (I know it depends on the ROM version as to whether or not this can be done). Dual partition and OS is how I've worked round the printer/scanner (I use the 450 for scanning only) issue, ie. I reboot into Snow Leopard from Mavericks, and I can scan to my heart's content. An inconvenience? Maybe, but cheaper! ;D

An old thread, but anyway, it seems the Canon Pixma 500 can print and scan with Mavericks quite well according to this, even if it is a bit late:

"Your MP500 is supported by the Gutenprint free driver (print but not scan):
Gutenprint for Mac OS X

Scanning is supported by a multipart TWAIN SANE driver (again, free):
TWAIN SANE Interface for MacOS X
(TWAIN is the "standard scanning connection" that Mac Preview and Image Capture support.)"
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6533580