Apple and Samsung sign exclusive laser printer deal

“Samsung Electronics has reached a deal to sell its new Swan monochrome laser printer (ML-1630, US$199) and Logan multifunction printer (SCX-4500, US$269) exclusively at Apple retail stores. The stylish new printers will be [exclusively] sold at Apple’s 160 stores nationwide until Jan. 2008,” The Digital Chosun Ilbo reports.

“‘Apple suggested the exclusive sales of Samsung’s new printers at its retail stores,’ a Samsung Electronics official said. ‘Apple is charmed by their sleek design and convenient user interface,'” The Digital Chosun Ilbo reports.

Full article here.

[Attribution Macworld UK. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Too Hot!” for the heads up.]

43 Comments

  1. HP would have been the best choice for printers. IMMO

    Their customer service is excellent, they have always been consistant with Mac drivers and such.

    The only problem is they like to bundle their complete software package with the printer, want root to install, don’t react fast enough to OS changes/updates. Security with thier software has been a issue.

    Also of course the big blowout at HP, and HP now a PC competitor to Apple.

    HP basically took over IBM’s place in the corporate PC market, Apple doesn’t play corporate but consumer. So there is peace.

  2. Let’s just hope they also have MacOS 10.5 drivers for all the multi-function stuff.
    Or at least drivers so you can print on them decently with MacOS.
    I don’t actually have a printer for my G4-mini, but buying one would be an interesting exercise, probably…

    I’ve heard good things about HPs printers – but only about the older ones (LJ40x0 etc.). The newer ones and the multi-function stuff – I wouldn’t touch them.

  3. You want a laser printer get an HP.

    Say what you will about everything else that HP sells, but their LaserJets are solid and reliable.

    I’ve had an 11 x 17 LaerJet 5000n for 8 or 9 years and aside from toner cartridges and getting a thorough cleaning, have had ZERO trouble with it.

    I never have to think twice before I hit Print.

  4. “they [HP] have always been consistant with Mac drivers and such”

    Yes, consistently bad. Try to get one of their MFP’s working reliably in a networked Mac environment and you will soon change your mind about the quality of their drivers.

  5. I have a Samsung ML-1450 and the toner carts aren’t cheap however undoing two screws donning a stylish pair of rubber gloves and pouring in a cheap bottle of toner off ebay does the trick nicely. I also get around four refills from one bottle.

    Schweet!!!

    But as they say on “Will it blend” – Don’t breathe this!!!

  6. Alec: I do tech support for a school and we had nothing but trouble with the wax printers. If you have to move it, you have to do a shut-down procedure and WAIT until the wax solidifies. If you don’t, the colors slosh together and you have a big expensive mess to clean up. If your prints get too hot, the colors run. Forget about ever laminating said prints; the colors run together there too. A royal pain in the ass they were, All of us in my dept. are glad they’re gone. The teachers too.

  7. The old HPs from the mid 90s are workhorse…still use a lserwriter today. The new inkjet multi-funtion are CRAP IMHO. They donot work well with Airport extreme (have to unplug and re-plug in printer and extreme.

    Their quality has gone down hill and their cost per print (at least for inkjet) have gone up.

    I am looking forward to replacing my HP with this Samsung.

  8. First to the guy who says get HP. You state that based on your 5000n an almost 10 year old printer!!! HP has changed a lot since then. Back then yes, get an HP. Today, not really

    To the guy who likes xerox wax ink. Yeah its cool, but it easily easily scratches off the paper. You can’t write on it to take notes, etc.

  9. I have gotten from great photo prints from my 3180 or whatever the model is. However, the fact that I can have it plugged into my airport is a pain in the ass. Not sure what the hell they are waiting for to get network printing to work properly. I like the multi-function stuff because being able to make copies without going to school and paying through the nose is really handy. I guess I’m saying they are better in theory than in practice.

  10. I wouldn’t be even a little tempted if my LaserWriter 4/600 could be put on our house LAN or run under OSX. As it is, we run OS9 on a beige tower just to service it. We have several thousand pages of ‘ink’ in the closet, waiting to be used … it was a gift from a school that was upgrading. Old … but reliable.

    Dave

  11. I’ve got 2 Samsungs that sit useless as Sumsung decided not to issue new drivers starting with Panther I believe. The printers where all of a couple months old at the time. Periodically I look for updated drivers and nada. So until I know there are Leopard drivers I’d wait on buying any Samsung printer, cool as they look.

  12. When my HP Laserjet 5MP died a few years ago, I went on a search for a replacement.

    Long story short, I discovered Ricoh makes a line of laser printers. They are built like tanks. Have true Adobe Postscript Level 3 (HP, Brothers and others have all developed clones), cost less than HP equivalent and their toner cartridges last much longer than any other I’ve had dealings with.

    The downside, you usually have to get them from copier dealers rather than the usual retail outlets. Or on-line as I did.

    The huge advantage of Postscript, while Ricoh offers OS X even OS 9 drivers, Postscript will always work from OS X, even if a printer maker doesn’t upgrade their drivers for new versions.

  13. “HP would have been the best choice for printers. IMMO

    Their customer service is excellent, they have always been consistant with Mac drivers and such.”

    there drivers are awful! have you ever (tried) to use an hp scanner with a Mac? heaven forbid you want them to actually make their products work….

  14. I’ve been wishing for a while now that Apple would make an all-in-one laser printer. I have an Epson that’s really mediocre. It’s noisy, slow and clunky. But worst of all, the software sucks bigtime. It’s a mismatched hodgepodge. That’s where Apple could excel. The thing got decent reviews by the computer magazines. I gotta quit believing those clowns.

  15. dmv: Look at the Canon Pixma MP760. Using one for 2 years now. Perfect printing on CD’s (small and normal size), Very good scanning (film, platen, slides) Good Mac-drivers and software.
    You might want to look carefully at the model though, USA-models have functions disabled from what I recall, but it’s easy to ‘break into it’s functions’ by pressing some key-sequence and changing it’s area-code. After that, (change it to Asia), you got access to all its functions.
    It’s an inkjet, but delivers perfect printing, scanning and everything you might need at home or in the office.
    Don’t have a new airport to run it on the network (USB-printer) but running it from a G4-mini makes it available to all other networked computers, both PC’s and Mac’s in our mixed network.
    Hope that helps you a bit.

  16. I’ve been wishing for a while now that Apple would make an all-in-one laser printer.It’s noisy, slow and clunky. But worst of all, the software sucks big time. It’s an ink jet, For me I’ve always been looking for the good quality ink jet were I can save money too.

    _____________
    delia

    It’s an inkjet, but delivers perfect printing, scanning and everything you might need at home or in the office.
    Don’t have a new airport to run it on the network (USB-printer) but running it from a G4-mini makes it available to all other networked computers, both PC’s and Mac’s in our mixed network.
    Hope that helps you a bit.
    Sep 22, 07 – 12:15 am

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.