Confused over printer software

I bought a Macbook back in November and installed Yosemite (and updates since), but have ongoing intermittent problems where the connection to the HP Photosmart 6520 printer seems to get lost (and someone please tell me what "finalising print job" in the printer dialog is when the printer has clearly finished - but I digress)

So I thought that I would update the software for the printer, and as luck would have it the App Store icon offered me new software yesterday, which I have installed.

But what have I installed? App Store tells me that it is v3.1. The Apple printers page (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201465) is adamant that the current version is 4.2.5, but says that it prints and doesn't scan (P code, but no S code on table row), and the HP support page says that it is 12.34, and dates from last October.

Who is right, and what version of what have I installed? It seems somewhat opaque!

I also received the new "HP printer software update 3.1" Software Update notice yesterday which will again be completely useless to me as the only HP printer I have networked is an old HP LaserJet 4ML AppleTalk only printer, so I sure don't need all the *&^%* software for every other printer they may have released.

If I could get it to download as a package, I'd have a look at it with Pacifist and see if anything has changed. Doubtful as the last HP "update" didn't do anything other than to waste a lot of HDD space that I finally ended up removing.

But I was surprised to read that Apple says it doesn't support scanning with your HP Photosmart 6520, yet a quick google search says it's supported:
https://www.google.ca/search?client...&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=fz6EVe3TDI3t8wfKjpKYDg

Personally I find that Apple is quite slack and often out to lunch having a picnic somewhere in the Alps when it some to printer/scanner support and it seems to have gotten worse since the release of Yosemite. I'm sticking to SL and Mavericks as the latest OS X for now.

Personally I find that Apple is quite slack and often out to lunch having a picnic somewhere in the Alps when it some to printer/scanner support and it seems to have gotten worse since the release of Yosemite. I'm sticking to SL and Mavericks as the latest OS X for now.

Click to expand...

Let's keep in mind that the responsibility for updating drivers for its hardware is up to the hardware manufacturer not Apple. Apple merely distributes what they receive from the hardware providers. They (Apple) may package everything together in one bundle as a download update but even that is understandable. And by the way, Windows is the same when it comes to drivers.

sjreynolds143 said:

I bought a Macbook back in November and installed Yosemite (and updates since), but have ongoing intermittent problems where the connection to the HP Photosmart 6520 printer seems to get lost (and someone please tell me what "finalising print job" in the printer dialog is when the printer has clearly finished - but I digress)

So I thought that I would update the software for the printer, and as luck would have it the App Store icon offered me new software yesterday, which I have installed.

But what have I installed? App Store tells me that it is v3.1. The Apple printers page (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201465) is adamant that the current version is 4.2.5, but says that it prints and doesn't scan (P code, but no S code on table row), and the HP support page says that it is 12.34, and dates from last October.

Who is right, and what version of what have I installed? It seems somewhat opaque!

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that the v. 3.1 is just the version for the "HP printer software update 3.1" install which will contain various versions for the included software.

I don't know why Apple doesn't have the scan function checked as the update seems to have scanning software included when I looked with Pacifist, and HP seems to indicate it all works with your HP Photosmart 6520 and Yosemite.

Maybe checkout their sites and the various topics if you have trouble or post back:
HP Printers - Installing a Mac Printer Driver Using Apple Software Update | HP® Support
HP Printers - HP Printers that Work with OS X v10.10 Yosemite | HP® Support

Meanwhile I'd sure like to find out how I can hide and ignore the latest Mavericks Software Update for the HP printer software update 3.1 that I really don't need or waste over 500MB disk space if it was downloaded and installed.

Not sure where you got the over 500 MB of space, but after the installation of this update, the total used by HP drivers on my machine is 170 MB. You likely already have that much installed also.

I'm going on the download installer size and past experience as to the ended up size on my boot drive and ended up manually trashing about 90% on previous unneeded "updates":

On a side note I find Apple to be very good with printer drivers. When you plug a printer in and add it in system preferences most of the time, OS X does the hard work for you by downloading and installing the drivers for you. I don't think Windows does this (does it?). It's just seamless compared to windows which (whenever i've used) requires you to install the crappy software that comes with printer which is usually slow as ****