LaserSoft Imaging

Is there plans for support/upgrades for the Canon 9950F scanner for the Mac OS (LION)?

Hi there,

Yes, there are plans to implement this scanner as well as the CanoScan 9900F. We can not tell for sure it will be possible right now.

Probably in a month or two we will have more information

Thanks for asking and for your patience!

Cheers

Having purchased and used Silverfast now for several years I am greatly disappointed by the fact that our Canon 9950F is still not supported in Mac OS10.7 LION.

We purchased new Macs over 4 months ago and since then we have had to source other software to enable us to continue to use our scanner.

All our other suppliers have updated their software and most of them have given a free upgrade path to enable us to continue to use hardware with updated drivers etc. We cannot even purchase your updated software yet because our scanner is not supported.

The previous posted reply by your good-selves stated that you planned to implement the Canon 9959F and that you would probably have more information in a month or two - that was almost three months ago.

From my position, this is so depressing - I was and still would be, a dedicated and loyal Silverfast customer.

There is a limit to ones patience.......!!

Hi Denboy

Denboy wrote:Having purchased and used Silverfast now for several years I am greatly disappointed by the fact that our Canon 9950F is still not supported in Mac OS10.7 LION.

Sorry about that

Denboy wrote:The previous posted reply by your good-selves stated that you planned to implement the Canon 9959F and that you would probably have more information in a month or two - that was almost three months ago.

It is correct, thanks for the reminder!

Denboy wrote:From my position, this is so depressing - I was and still would be, a dedicated and loyal Silverfast customer.

There is a limit to ones patience.......!!

I agree and can understand your position.

Now I would like to make things clear to all Canon CanoScan 9900F and 9950F owners and especially to those users running Lion.

The implementation of the scanner is not just a matter of goodwill or good intentions. Certain technical requirements have to be met to make this possible.
One of the main requirements is a compatible driver provided by the scanner manufacturer. This is true for all scanners. The older the scanner, the less likely it is that the scanner manufacturer will invest money in producing new drivers for those old devices, technology companies are profit driven and are more interested in selling their latest products rather than extending the life of older ones at a loss (in many cases there is not any scanner manufacturer anymore).

Up to this date (Dec 02, 2011) there are no available drivers for this scanner model under Lion, the last Mac compatible driver (as shown here: http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/scanners/canoscan_series/canoscan_9950f#DriversAndSoftware) is the : deldrvosx1320efg.dmg which was created in Nov. 2009.
That driver probably will not work with Lion because the operating system entirely works in 64 bits, and does not support 32 bits applications.

On our side there are also certain technical aspects which can make the implementation complicated or even impossible.

Even if manufacturer drivers are provided is not a guarantee that the implementation in SilverFast will be feasible, certain libraries needed for the work with SilverFast might be completely absent (as is the case with these very two scanners under 64 bits Win).

Please understand that we are not the bad guys with arbitrary politics. As a matter of fact we want to support as many scanners as possible but for the reasons explained this is not always the case.

Thanks for your patience but especially thanks for your understanding.

Kind regards

Hi

I'm slightly confused with the main requirement you say that Siverfast cannot be made to work with the Canon 9950F with LION is and I quote -

Up to this date (Dec 02, 2011) there are no available drivers for this scanner model under Lion, the last Mac compatible driver (as shown here: http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/c ... ndSoftware) is the : deldrvosx1320efg.dmg which was created in Nov. 2009.
That driver probably will not work with Lion because the operating system entirely works in 64 bits, and does not support 32 bits applications.

Can you explain why the Canon Toolbox software and v**s**n works flawlessly with LION and Photoshop CS5.5 in 32 bit mode also works perfectly. I appreciate that Rosetta based (universal binary apps) are no longer supported by OS10.7 but this has nothing to do with 32 bit apps which the 32 bit kernel in Lion does support. I do appreciate that it may well be that the process of upgrading the software for these two scanners is far more complicated than just the driver, (ie., Apple making certain libraries hidden files) but if the driver part of your argument is flawed, how can I believe the remainder.

Finally I do accept that supporting older products must be a nightmare and whilst you have provided, in my opinion, the best scanner software for our scanner up to now it does appear that we will now have to look elsewhere for support.....

Hi

Denboy wrote:Can you explain why the Canon Toolbox software and v**s**n works flawlessly with LION and Photoshop CS5.5 in 32 bit mode also works perfectly. I appreciate that Rosetta based (universal binary apps) are no longer supported by OS10.7 but this has nothing to do with 32 bit apps which the 32 bit kernel in Lion does support.

I can not explain with certainty why canon toolbox works, perhaps canon has an ICA driver which is implemented for the Apple image capture protocol which is not used by SilverFast. v**s**n develops their own low level drivers and does not use the official drivers from canon. CS5 is a 64 bit app which can be started in 32 bit mode.

Denboy wrote:I do appreciate that it may well be that the process of upgrading the software for these two scanners is far more complicated than just the driver, (ie., Apple making certain libraries hidden files) but if the driver part of your argument is flawed, how can I believe the remainder.

Well, I guess I can not give you any other proof than my word and logical arguments derived from the experience of our engineers.

Kind regards