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The Canon MP990 is finally available in South Africa. A multi-feature printer, including a scanner, this is one device I have been waiting to get to use for some time. Let’s talk about the features the MP 990 provides: it’s a compact three in one device, containing a photo printer and a scanner. That’s just a part of it, of course. The MP990 is a photo printer and high-definition scanner, an all-in-one unit that will fulfil all needs a fairly demanding user will want to have access to. Not only does the MP990 print photographs in high definition, but it provides decent scanning with support for slides and duplex printing on demand. It may be worthwhile to provide some additional detail on this device in the future.

But, as a Macintosh user, I am becoming rather aware of the support provided to that platform by hardware vendors. Canon is usually quite excellent when it comes to camera support on the Mac. On the installation procedure for the MP990, I found their offering quite lacking. After having unpacked the printer and having followed the rather deliberate unpacking cues provided by orange magic tape, I loaded the provided Mac CD ROM and proceeded to install the software to get the printer to function. That’s an error, of course. The release of Snow Leopard has made many hardware installation procedures invalid. Whereas systems without Snow Leopard can safely load the provided CD ROM software, more modern systems will have little success in getting the multi-function MP990 to work. Here’s the lowdown: Snow Leopard has significantly altered the way hardware support is provided. To install a modern Canon peripheral, the first step is to download the Apple-supported Canon drivers. Get the 250MB download here.

Once the Apple drivers have been installed, set up a printer in the system preferences and point the printer to the correct device. I found that the printer would work only once the Apple drivers had been installed and the latest drivers for the MP990 had been installed from Canon‘s support site. It is important that the MP990 is identified in the Apple configuration indicating the Canon IJ network connection:

This is possible only once the latest Apple drivers have been loaded, followed by the installation of the latest drivers available from Canon. Get the Canon drivers here.

Scanning seems to work without an issue, even over a network connection. Printing requires an extra effort… It’s not out-of-the-box…