Apple rolled out a trio of printer driver updates on Thursday. And while the updates target printer software for Brother, Samsung and HP devices that shipped with Mac OS X 10.6, users running Lion can update the drivers, too.
Brother 2.7 Printer Drivers promises to install the latest software for printers and scanners (or at least the ones listed in this support document. The update runs on Mac OS X 10.6.0 or later, including Lion.
Likewise, Samsung Printer Drivers v2.2 for Mac OS X requires either Snow Leopard or Lion. It promises to update Samsung printing software that shipped with Mac OS X 10.6 for a slew of supported printer models.
As this article was published, HP Printer Drivers v.2.7 only mentions support for Mac OS X 10.6.1 or later; however, we were able to download and install the driver update on a Lion-powered machine in the Macworld office. The update promises the latest HP and printing scanning software for supported printers.
All three updates are available either via OS X’s Software Update feature or on the Downloads page on Apple’s support site.
This was the first Mac update, ever, to fail – it stalled and became unresponsive. Worse, attempting to restart the system failed. My MBP became an expensive brick with a grey screen and a perpetually spinning wagon wheel.
Luckily Lion’s new recovery partition works. Repairing permissions from Disk Utility restored my Mac to health.
I’m sure my experience was rare, but it was a shock after 10 years of faultless updates.