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I spent all of my beautiful Saturday afternoon trying to find a way to import photos from my Canon camera to my iMac mid-2011 that I recently upgraded to Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, only to find out that, according to Apple Support Chat, Canon no longer provides driver or software support for photo transfer from Canon cameras to Apple iMacs running Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite. I was told by Apple verbatim, "This is a Canon problem and you will just have to wait until Canon comes out with drivers and photo transfer software that works with Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite." Even though prior to Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, every other operating system that Apple has produced since I bought my first iMac computer in 2007 and all Apple photo editing software (iPhoto, Image Capture, Aperture), plus Adobe Lightroom 5, imported photos just fine from my Canon camera.

 

Now, as a part-time professional photographer and fine artist, I know there are a lot of professional photographers and fine artists out there who own Macs and Canon cameras. A whole lot. And for Apple's position to be "Hey, this is a Canon problem and you will just have to put your business and livelihood on hold until Canon fixes it. It's not Apple's problem." is well, a little callous to say the least. If not downright UNsupportive and certainly not what I paid for when I purchased my AppleCare support agreement that does not expire until December 20, 2014. My response to the end of that Apple Support Chat was "You know I used to be able to upgrade my iMac to the latest Mac OS X release and not have to worry about compatibility issues. It just worked. Now it just doesn't." To which the Apple Support Chat response was "Have a nice day". I am not kidding.

 

Fortunately though, Canon technical support provided a workaround that Apple should also be aware of, but apparently isn't. Or else, if it is, it is not sharing that information with its customers who have active AppleCare Support agreements, which I do have. Apparently even the oldest Canon DSLR camera, which I happen to own, a Canon EOS Digital Rebel (the original), supports the Picture Transfer Protocol driver which is built into all Macs, even the ones running Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite. Canon technical support told me that all I needed to do was make a simple change on the camera settings. Change the Communication method from "Normal" to "PTP". That's it. When I did that, Apple's Image Capture software was then able to see and transfer my photos. Although it still would not display the thumbnail previews for images captured in RAW format on my camera with the PTP communications setting, it did transfer those images in RAW format correctly to my iMac hard drive where I could then view them in Finder and Preview, and more importantly import them to iPhoto, Aperture or Lightroom 5 for editing.

 

I am posting this in the hopes that someone else who is experiencing this problem will not have to spend an entire sunny Saturday afternoon in early November (a rare occurrence in the Pacific Northwest) trying in vain to upload photos from their Canon camera that are critical for their business to their Apple iMac running Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, which is also critical for their business, only to have Apple Chat Support tell them that they just have to wait until Canon fixes it and "it's not Apple's problem", when every Mac has a built-in driver that is compatible with all Canon DSLR cameras. Too bad Apple does not share this information with their Support personnel and their iMac customers who have active AppleCare Support agreements that they purchased less than 2 years ago. Fortunately Canon does. Even for their customers who bought an original Canon EOS Digital Rebel DSLR camera 8 years ago and who have no support agreement.