Barcode Label Solutions Blog

As a Mac aficionado, you probably know that Mac Lion (Mac OS X Lion to give it its full name, or Mac OS X version 7) was released in 2011 as the successor to Mac OS X Snow Leopard (version 6). The names are pretty enough, but this kind of release is a headache for some users using the Mac platform as a base for applications and peripherals. Why? Because Mac Lion is not backwards compatible with its predecessor – Apple dropped support for a number of functions or programs. So what’s the situation for people wanting to use a label maker for Mac Lion, for example?

If you can run a business using Mac OS X, shouldn’t you also have the same power to do the printing you need – especially label printing for things like for product and distribution barcodes? It sounds reasonable, but things haven’t always been that simple. In the past, unless the printer you wanted to use had a specific Mac OS printer driver available, you had to grit your teeth and do your printing via a PC. For specific types of printing such as barcode label printing, OS X label printers that did work out of the box tended to be small desk top printers only.

So what makes a thermal transfer printer for Mac such a good idea? Assuming that your requirement is to print out adhesive labels for barcoding or similar, it’s bound to be a smarter choice than trying to use an office printer. After all, who wants to have adhesive bleeding into a laser printer mechanism, ink jet smears on the facestock or barcode labels that become rapidly unreadable once they’re printed and out there in the real world? Thermal printing scores a big advantage over laser printing in particular, because the high temperatures of lasers can melt the label adhesive. In addition, there are the IT acrobatics necessary to print individual labels from an office printer without wastage and the labor-intensive process for trying to print onto special media. It doesn’t take much to see that for anything other than standard cut sheet printing office printers are an unhappy choice, and that thermal printing is the way to go.

Mac OS X already benefits from strong presence in industries such as design and publishing, with a solid reputation for flexibility, quality and performance. The latest OS X Server software from Apple gives even more Macs the power to act as servers, extending their use to enterprise-wide IT applications and fueling the growth of a company. As supply chains and logistics also expand, so does the need to print labels – product labels, shipping labels, barcode labels, you name it! However, if you want to print labels from OS X, you’ll still want to make sure you use a convenient and cost-effective solution.

 “Think Different” was the name of the advertising campaign launched by Apple 15 years ago, and it has continued to innovate till the present day. What does that then mean about using another manufacturer’s barcode printer for MAC? If it says “MAC compatible” on the box, is that enough? A few words on how Apple has set about connectivity between printers and its computers will help in choosing and using a suitable model.