Getting Old Printers to Work on New Macs

The saga that has become getting my wife's new computer working is finally over. Yesterday I sat down and figured out how to get all of our printers usable on her new MacBook air. It involved countless Internet searches, none of which helped solve the problem. In fact, one post that I followed created more issues that I had to work around. For anyone who has upgraded from an Intel-based Mac to one of the new Apple silicon Macs, there is one little step that I discovered on my own should you want to use any of your existing printers.

Apple's Migration Assistant did a great job of moving all of my wife's files from her old computer to her new one. It even copied over non-approved programs like printer drivers engineered for the Intel CPUs. The problem surfaces when you try to run them but let's not jump ahead of the story.

My wife needed to print something up last Friday and could not. I did not have time to help her solve the issue at the time and finally got around to looking at it earlier this week. We have 3 printers in the house and she really only uses 2 of them. Neither of them would connect to her new computer. I looked up a number of forums and the best information I had told me to delete the files out of a printer directory. DO NOT DO THAT. I won't repeat where that directory is as that caused an issue I had to remedy, which I will explain at the end of the post.

Nowhere did I find the correct instructions and so I am posting them here. All I needed to do was install Apple's Rosetta 2 software. It allows programs created for the Intel Macs to run on the new Apple M-series CPUs. I discovered this solution when I tried to install printer-driver software. It asked if I wanted to install Rosetta. The first time I said, No. The second time, I gave it a shot. That allowed my Samsung color laser printer to work with my wife's laptop.

Most people will not have a problem with printers unless they are really old like mine. Apple has come up with an all-encompassing printing system packaged with MacOS called AirPrint. There are a huge number of printers supported already. Just not really old ones. Fortunately one of my printers that my wife never uses is on the list and is my Cannon. I connected her computer directly to the printer through a USB cable and it printed without issue.

The last printer I needed to get running is my wife's HP Deskjet 1000 - J110. Apple's Migration Assistant copied over all of the correct driver files but I mistakenly blew them away at the advice of a post I read. Once I figured out I needed to reinstall all the driver files, I looked for them directly from HP. None of the programs I tried worked. I still have the old Mac and so I located all of the files and copied them to the new computer. I used the command-line interface or terminal to do all of the copying and will spare you the details. It involved the "tar" command to create single file that had all of the driver files in their correct directories. Once I copied that single file to the new computer, I used the "tar" command again to install the files in the correct place.

At this point in the process I had to go somewhere and didn't get back to it until yesterday. I thought I had done everything correctly and tried to print something. I immediately got an error message telling me that the MacOS refused to run a program because it couldn't trust the source. I had to use the administrator password to force the computer to run the program. The same thing happened 3 or 4 more times with different programs. Finally I stopped getting error messages but the printer refused to print. At this point I did the only thing that made sense: I rebooted the computer. When the computer came back up, I tried to print a page and it worked. I can now say that my wife's new computer is as usable as the old one before it died.

Should you get a new M-series Mac computer from Apple and want it to work with your old printer, don't do anything other than install Rosetta 2. Your computer will ask if you want to install it and just say, Yes. You don't have to go look for it or do anything special. Then things should work well. If they don't, try a reboot before doing anything else. If that still doesn't work, throw away your old printer and go buy a new one.

My New Work Laptop

I have been at my current company for 2 months now and that has given me plenty of time to run my new work-provided laptop through its paces. It is a Dell Latitude 5320 and nothing special. It has an Intel i5 processor with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB hard drive. A simple description would be that it works for my daily activities as the director of software engineering.

Earlier in my career I did a lot of software development and this machine would not be nearly powerful enough. Now I do a lot of management tasks and that doesn't require a powerful machine. Truth be told, I could probably get by with a powerful Chromebook but I do like having a full-functioning computer. I do a lot of Microsoft Teams meetings and I use the camera a lot. I also use the computer for e-mail and I like having a full Microsoft Outlook client on my machine. That gives me the option to compose responses to e-mail while I am not connected to the Internet even though I have never had the need to do so.

That last sentence is very common when we think about what we want in a computer. While we may never use a feature, we want that option. Unfortunately it leads to wanting a machine that is more expensive than what we really need. Understanding that and being able to recognize it can ultimately save some serious money.

Another shift that has happened in the last few years is the idea of creating a document and storing it on your own computer. Now I am more apt to store a document on Google Drive or Microsoft's OneDrive as it is significantly easier to share. A document can be either a spreadsheet, word processing document, or presentation file. As they are stored somewhere other than my local machine, I don't need a large hard drive. If I did, I could always add an external drive and I have several laying around my office.

Honestly I never would have thought such a low-end laptop would work for me but I have to admit that it is. Should I need something a little more powerful, I can always go to our IT department and request it. For now that isn't necessary.

Research on a New Computer

A friend has asked me to work with him on a new project. This will be outside my normal work and is something completely different from what I do at my regular job. Therefore I don't want to use my work computer for the project as that is not fair to my current employer. This new project needs to run on an iPhone and so I need to invest in a Mac as that is the best place to develop iOS applications. Yes, I know you can develop on Windows, but I have another personal project where I would like to use a Mac and so buying one solves two problems for me.

My natural tendency is to go out and get the best computer on the market. Fortunately I realize that I really don't need that much processing power. Remember that this is a side project and isn't my full-time job. If it was, then I would have no problem spending the extra money.

Today I went through Apple's website and compared the iMac and Mac mini. My second project requires a 4K monitor and so I don't want a laptop. While I could add a 2nd monitor, that just adds to the cost of the machine and I am trying to spend as little money as possible. So I ran through the website and configured 2 comparable machines in each style of computer. I erroneously assumed that the Mac mini would come in at a less expensive price. That is true, but once I add a 4K monitor, even with a highly discounted one, it is about $200 than the iMac. Furthermore, the iMac has a slightly faster processor and I can get it with twice as much memory than the max configuration for Mac mini. For the record, both computers come in at under $2,000 with 16MB of memory, 1TB disk drives, and Intel i7 processors running at or above 3GHz.

I have to say that I am surprised as I expected the Mac mini to be the less expensive choice. There are a number of other things on the project to research before I purchase the computer and so pricing may change in the near future. Apple has a tendency to announce more hardware choices towards the summer and that may influence prices a bit. If that happens, then I will adjust accordingly.

Final Answer

My son finally made it home safely after two years in Armenia. I have been struggling with the decision on what computer to get him for his first year in college. I presented several choices to him and let him do some research for several days. He came back with a computer choice. Then I felt I needed to make one last look to make sure we reviewed all possible options.

There are several online computer vendors that allow you to specify the features you are looking for and so I visited Best Buy's. They have a store really close to my house and so I knew I could order it, have it shipped there for free, and pick it up rather quickly. I used the configuration tool and put in the options I thought would work best for a college freshman looking to start in the Mechanical Engineering department. Surprisingly I found a computer I had overlooked. I presented it to my son as a viable alternative to his choice and let him decide. I always believe that any large purchase should be thought about for at least a day. When I go to buy cars, I often tell the salesperson I want to sleep on it before I make a purchase. They hate that but then I don't have buyer's remorse. So I let my son sleep on the decision.

He came back and settled on a MacBook Air with an Intel i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 128 GB solid-state drive. Sure I could have gotten more disk space, but with terabyte drives costing $70, why would you need to? I agreed with his decision and so I ordered the computer. The only problem with his choice is that the i7 is an upgrade and so it is not kept in stock at the Apple stores. I had to have it custom built. It will be here next week but is coming all the way from China. School starts on Monday so I hope my son doesn't need his computer until Wednesday when it is due to arrive.