Why my love affair with Apple may be over and why Microsoft are the Kings of Compatibility

I needed to scan a document.

I have an HP OfficeJet printer and scanner thats about 3 years old, we don't use it much because we rarely need to scan or print in colour. All our letter printing is on our Kyocera FS 1350-DN (which is the best printer we have ever owned; insanely reliable and super cheap to run)

So I put a letter on the scanner bed and try and open up the scanner software. Fail. Software is not compatible with Mavericks.

Ok. Not a problem, software needs upgrading from time to time. I'll download the latest drivers.

There. are. no. drivers.

HP say that they are available on the App Store. Well I can't find em. They used to be there when I was on Mountain Lion. Now they're not

It's not just me that has the problem.

I sent the following in the crash report to Apple

Apple need to work harder with device manufacturers to ensure compatibility. I have a printer that I can’t use from Mavericks. Fortunately every machine in my house that uses Windows from XP to Vista to Windows 8 and 8.1 still supports the device. You may not think that this is important but I’m fed up of Apples attitude here.Whatever everyone thinks of Microsoft - they are the Kings of Compatibility

In the end I used my Windows 8.1 VM (running in Parallels on the same Mac) to install the HP software. Worked perfectly first time. It even worked wirelessly - something that never really worked on the OSX version.

Is this Apple's fault? Not really - they can't be responsible for every device driver produced by every manufacturer.

It's a real problem though. Microsoft work with device manufacturers to make sure that compatibility is maintained. Thats why big business will never move from Windows to OSX - they will never get a guarantee from Apple that software will keep on working after OS upgrades.

Apple could get away with this when they had a tiny share of the market. They could change CPU families at will, they could break software easily and their followers would accept the situation, buy the new version and move on.

They can't get away with this so easily now, people buy PCs and expect them to last years. I have an 8 years old Dell that works perfectly and still plays modern games, I have a 4 year old Dell that plays any game I want (after a 30 quid GPU upgrade), my 27" iMac is 4 years old and my 20"iMac (passed down through all 3 sons) is 8 years old.

The Dells updated to Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 with minimum fuss. The 27" is on Mavericks but the 20" is stuck on an old version of OSX. My white MacBook is stuck on an old OS. My sons ancient Samsung Netbook updated to Windows 8 in an embarrassingly short amount of time. Runs like greased lightning , despite being on an Atom class CPU. Microsoft are really good at this stuff. 

Don't get me wrong, I love my big iMac. The screen is huge and makes an outrageously good development machine but I am increasingly using Windows 8.1 in a VM on it in preference to Mavericks because its easier to setup and get running. Everything is compatible.