The Windows mindset in Macintosh software

July 1st, 2008

I own a rather nice HP Photosmart 5180C that I got virtually for free from the Apple store. It’s a really nice printer though it seems to eat up ink at a rate of knots. However since I rarely print stuff, this is not a big deal.
In fact I print so infrequently that I only just got around to installing the printer drivers and then only to use the scanner. It comes with 3 CDs – 2 for Windows and 1 for Macintosh.
After some hassle with the driver CD and not having a CD-ROM in my Macbook Air, I get the install program running. HP has made it look mostly pretty but they’re still a Windows vendor and they do all the stupid crap that I hated about Windows.

1. The Installer has about 5 steps before you get to choose what kind of install you want – and there’s only one option – the default simple install which is 200Mb!
2. Once it gets going, the installer, without asking permission, adds various crap to my dock – I don’t want access to the goddamn photosmart app every second of my day – Windows start menus are useless due to this software arrogance that assumes you want their 18 applications in your face 24/7 – I’m just surprised they didn’t put shortcuts on my desktop.
3. I don’t know how they did it but the installer pulls focus from other windows, about once every 10 seconds. This is a horrible Windows trick – you’re working on one thing and suddenly some other window pops to the front. OSX has a very nice way of bouncing the dock icons to tell you an app needs your attention – simply switching away is evil and for an install app?? WTF.

There are some other annoyances – it tends to prefer HPs Photosmart application instead of iPhoto – when it copies photos it just dumps them in the Pictures folder etc. However I can live with these. There’s a bunch of really nice stuff about the printer and the 2 way communication between it and the computer makes for a really nice experience. But it would be really nice if HP engineers used a Macintosh for a few hours instead of just dumping the Windows experience on us when we explicitly opted out.

Update:
Well I spoke too soon as usual. The drivers were for OSX 10.4 and didn’t play well with my new 10.5 Macbook. After much struggling I found the updated drivers and am installing them now. The installer looks much better and so far isn’t pulling focus. It’s doubled in size though – 400Mb for a printer driver!

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