Servicing the Customer

I have a Canon camera. It came with nice software including one that stitches shots together into a panoramic picture. Since my Canon camera has a pano setting, I like to take a series of pictures that result in a panoramic digital file.

I have installed Mac’s new OS, Snow Leopard, which has been out several months now. Lo and behold, Canon’s PhotoStitch software does not work in Snow Leopard. Naturally, I went to the Canon website to find an update that did. Nope. Not there. And not even something telling me that they just don’t have it yet … or ever.

I sent an email to their customer service department. I got the following response:

“Thank you for writing to us.  We value you as a Canon customer and appreciate the opportunity to assist you. Unfortunately, the latest version, PhotoStitch 3.2.1 Updater for Mac, is only compatible with OS X 10.3-10.5.

“We regret any inconvenience this causes. Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.”

I responded that indeed they could be of further assistance by letting me know when such an update would be available. I received the following reply:

“We appreciate your continued correspondence regarding PhotoStitch.

“At this time we do not have additional information regarding a newer version of PhotoStitch.  Canon has yet to release information pertaining to a new version of this software.  We are happy to put in a suggestion to Canon USA though through our Customer Feedback process.  This process allows us to capture important feedback from our valued customers.  As we constantly strive to improve our products and services, your comments are vital to our continued success.

“For important product updates, including available drivers and product notifications, please visit Canon's Web site at www.powershot.com.

“We hope this information is helpful to you.  Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance with PhotoStitch.”

So, as a customer, I have been serviced.

P.S., I received the following response after complaining that they had really not given me any useful information so far:

“We appreciate your continued correspondence regarding Photostitch. We are aware that Apple customers typically do wait a little longer for update patches and new versions. For this we very much apologize. I can assure you that engineers in Japan are hard at work developing current and new versions of our software for various platforms. Our only regret is that we don't at the current time have software that meets your specifications.”

To which, I replied: Yes, but ... Snow Leopard was introduced publicly in August 2009. Certainly there were specification out there for software designers before then. It's now the end of March, some seven months after it was introduced. And, no, Mac users don't typically wait longer in any material amount for updates that work when Mac puts out a newer version of its OS.