Re: Printing with No Color Management (again)
Re: Printing with No Color Management (again)
- Subject: Re: Printing with No Color Management (again)
- From: Scott Geffert <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 18:39:34 -0400
Dear John,
I'm glad to hear that these discussions are getting through to people at Apple, however Please understand that many of the people aggregating these problems and posting them are for the most part encountering problems at end user sites For every posting here there are hundreds of customers and man hours of testing behind each story. The natural flow of feedback was interrupted by the recession when people stopped upgrading and in many cases skipped an entire generation of CPU, OS, Application and Printer updates. Of course, Apple made a lot of changes during this same time frame. When people started re-equipping the %@(_!_) hit the fan. This may explain why it feels like you have been blindsided with technical problems and so much anger.
Here is where Apple needs to take some responsibility:
When Apple asks for specific feedback it is as if Apple is using us as extended uncompensated R&D employees. Many of these people including myself in the field are focused on helping the end user simply make things work. Gathering the information related to what's working/not working in the field will often require multiple rounds of test measurement cycles, as well as things like installing various versions of the OS and drivers. This is a tremendous amount of work and some of it can only happen onsite. To ask someone like Chris and others to provide more detail than they have already provided is a bit insulting and unrealistic. This is like Toyota asking us to drive around and try to document the exact scenario when the throttle will stick. At some point it is up to the manufacturer to take some responsibility.
You could argue that Apple cannot control what Epson Canon, Adobe and other third parties do, but actually by making radical changes to core ICC support with no transparency during development Apple is in effect the responsible party here. ICC is an open international ISO standard protocol and therefore does not need to be a proprietary "skunkworks" layer. So instead of asking us to do your R&D and product development I suggest that Apple works towards a mission statement in support of open color standards to set the bar high for itself and the rest of the industry. Then and only then can Apple absolve itself of responsibility for color issues. Once more this goes for the entire Apple experience MacOS, iOS must be in sync when it comes to color.
If Apple has 1000 people dedicated to ColorSync I suggest Apple dedicates ten of them to fan out across the market and shadow color consultants into the field to gather information. They will also be able to document first hand the frustration of the users-your customers. This may be the only realistic way to address this problem. I don't think Chris or any other on this forum should be doing your software development, but maybe having 1000 people working on something that was standardized years ago could be part of the problem. The wheel does not beed to be re-invented. It worked in the past just fine. I agree with other people on this forum that this is not about bugs, but a tactical mistake in the implementation of ICC color standards.
I wish this problem was as sexy as location data tracking so it got international news coverage, then Steve would get involved to set things straight in 30 days. It's a shame to even have to point this out (as a shareholder) but it is the sad unspoken reality.
On the bright side I am assuming the following:
Apple is well ware of all of these issues and is already testing the new workflow for LION
Apple will announce a recommitment to open ICC color management across the entire family of devices
Apple will publish a white paper clearly explaining to users and developers the entire revised ColorSync architecture and it's proper use
Apple will begin to promote color as a core brand value including online and in-store presentations abut the value of color communication and the Apple advantage
BY the way, Apple did all of this before and it helped build the brand to where it is today
I cant wait to hear the announcement!
On Apr 27, 2011, at 4:55 PM, email@hidden wrote:
> Re: Printing with No Color Management (again)
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