Who Else Wants to Plug a Scanner into OS X

OSX is not all plug-n-play after all. I watch their video saying the OS works with most types of media hardware. Well… not. OS X can’t recognize a Genius Vivid-1200E Scanner I borrowed from a friend. It’s a big wonder why OSX doesn’t even get a hint that a scanner, a basic image capturing device, is attached to it.

Genius site wasn’t helpful so don’t bother… see.

Google came to the rescue as usual and showed me a post of MacDaddy (who happens to be my kid brother), TechThought and InsanelyMac about installing TWAIN SANE to keep you sane.

So I got all these files from the SANE site.

Installed it in this order. Don’t ask me why just install.

1. libusb
2. sane-backends
3. sane-preference
4. sane-interface

Then you should be able to run an image capture by going to Devices > Browse Devices.

Unfortunately for me, the scanner still won’t be detected despite going through the SANE FAQ. This is very reminiscent to Windows OS were you go hunt for drivers and play the russian roulette to see if the driver will work or not. Then after spending almost a couple of hours with the hope to finish a 5 minute scanning task, I opted to plug the scanner to my trusty laptop on Win XP. Yes they harmoniously worked well as expected!

No wonder I cringe when I hear or read people say the worn-out cliche, “once you go mac you never go back.” Uuugh! Why did I even type that.

Ok so for those wishing to hook up a scanner into OS X hope this helps… or not.