As I make the switch (slowly) to OS X, I keep discovering new and exciting things about the operating system. Occasionally though, I find some annoying aspects that impede my progress, and cause me to question my desire to shift platforms. In addition to the fact that HP hasn’t bothered to write OS 10.3 drivers for our scanner (HP 5370c), which we specifically bought because it was friendly to both platforms, I have run into a problem with using a USB trackball on our fileserver, which runs 10.2.8.
Luckily, in both cases there appear to be independent developers solving the problem.
Scanner Drivers
The TWAIN SANE Interface for Mac OS X makes use of the existing SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) project, which was originally developed for LINUX. I haven’t tested it yet, but I have hope.
USB Trackball/Mouse Drivers
According to a thread at macosxhints the trackball problem can be solved with the purchase of a shareware driver called USB Overdrive. The project site provides a great summary of the software’s purpose:
The USB Overdrive X is a driver for Mac OS X 10.2.4 or later (including Panther) that handles any USB mouse, trackball, joystick and gamepad from any manufacturer and lets you configure them either globally or on a per-application basis.
I look forward to trying it out with a Microsoft Trackball Explorer.
I will post the results of both tests soon.