A Tale of 3 MBAs and a Printer

This is an old printer and no longer supported by Epson. It was introduced in 2015, ten years ago. Epson’s drivers for the L360 only support up to macOS 12 Monterey. It’s no surprise that it has finally become incompatible with macOS.

“Nothing has worked, Any ideas? Yes, buy a new printer. Sorry

"Epson L360 Series (USB inkjet)"

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Printing an Obsolete Printer on a New Mac:

Use a Virtual Machine:

Using a Virtual Machine of Windows 11, you would be this to work just fine through use of the Windows 11 drivers, provided by Epson: SPT_C11CE55501 | Epson L360 | L Series

About the Mac:

All would be accessed and would operate as desired on the VM. Virtual Machine applications include VMWare Fusion and Parallels. Learn more here: What Is a Virtual Machine? - VMWare Support. Use Parallels for a Mac with a Silicon processor.

Tried a different User Account yet?

Add a user or group on Mac - Apple Support

Give it Admin privileges. Bypass all the nonessential questions — Not Now, Set up later, skip, continue, etc.

As I wrote I doubt anything will change but ruling out that remote possibility will advance troubleshooting. Delete the temporary User Account when you are finished with it.

At an extreme you could dump the problem back on Apple by telling them you're returning the printer for a full cash refund, but I suspect they won't care. Neither will Epson. It's a weird problem. Tortured workarounds should absolutely positively not be necessary, but that's the reason I asked how attached you are to that printer.

I leased an imageCLASS MF7480 a while ago. It was phenomenal.

To summarize,

• You have three different MBAs running the same macOS version, all with identical Canon and Epson drivers
• All three can print to a Canon printer over USB
• Two of them can print to the Epson L360. The M4 is the only one that can't.

On that M4,

• You already tried resetting the printing system, thereby eliminating all drivers, ruling out a conflict that shouldn't be a factor anyway.
• You subsequently reinstalled the identical driver that works with all the other Macs.
• As a perfunctory step you reinstalled macOS, which doesn't usually help anyway.
• The problem remains with a new Admin account, which obviates any conflicts in the user account space.
• Intervening hardware factors (hubs / docks / cables) have all been ruled out

If anything is missing let me know.

On the basis of the above limited information, the only logical step remaining would be to suspect the Epson driver has some obscure incompatibility with that particular hardware (the new MBA). That seems unlikely, and that's the reason I suspect we are overlooking something. In your situation I would research an Epson printer support forum (if there is such a thing) to see if there are any similar complaints. That will be a challenge due to the relative obscurity of that printer and the fact the M4 MBA is still new to the market.

To keep troubleshooting, try "sharing" that printer through one of the operable Macs. Connect it to the M2 or M3, enable printer sharing, and print a document from the M4. I am nearly certain that will work, but if it doesn't it may suggest additional actions.

The only other thing that is different between the three systems is that the two older M-series Macs already had the printer installed on an older version of macOS. Perhaps there is something from the printer configuration of the older OS which allows them to work on Tahoe. When installing the driver on a clean install of Tahoe that "secret sauce" is not there.

What is the exact version of the M4 MBAir? You can get this information by clicking the Apple menu and selecting "About this Mac. I haven't really been following the news for the new releases of Apple hardware since Tahoe was released, but If this M4 MBAir is the exact same model that was released back in March, then you could try installing macOS 15.x Sequoia on it. This was a possibility on the Intel Macs, but I'm not sure if this will also work on an M-series Mac since I've never had the opportunity to try it.

If you can install Sequoia on it, then install the Epson driver & make sure you can print. If you can print using Sequoia, then try installing the Tahoe upgrade over top of the Sequoia installation.

Otherwise I think it is time to watch football at least until Epson releases an updated driver for this printer (assuming they still feel like supporting this printer).

Edit: Forgot, you will need to create a bootable macOS 15.x Sequoia USB installer using the instructions in the following Apple article:

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

It will be interesting whether you can actually download the Sequoia installer using the information in the following Apple article (link to the App Store and instructions for the command line as well):

How to download and install macOS - Apple Support

If you cannot do this on the new M4 MBAir, then you can download Sequoia & create the USB installer on one of the other two Macs.

I'm actually very curious.

That's the first time you mentioned a hub, which is an important piece of information. I understand you ruled it out though. Are you certain the Mac's USB-C port is functioning properly?

• The M4 shipped with Sequoia. I suspect that it inherited the Sequoia version of Epson's driver when we did Migration Assistant from the M3 to the M4.

Your suspicions are correct. None of that should have been a problem. It sounds completely reasonable. If not for the particular printer model, it's exactly what I've been doing for decades — consistent with what HWTech wrote, for the reasons he explained.

When the M4 wouldn't print we upgraded it and the M3 to Thahoe and installed Epsons MacOS26 diver.

Installed the driver on both the M3 and M4? Not that it matters, it's also completely reasonable. Yet the M3 continues to print whereas the M4 won't.

That brings us back to my suspicion that Epson is missing something with their driver implementation for that specific model Mac. If not for the fact I believe you did it already, you might consider completely erasing the M4 and repopulating its contents from the M3 when offered the opportunity (again). When I start repeating things that should have worked the first time, a course correction is required. In such cases doing anything different is preferable, even if it makes no sense.

Be sure to select "Computer and network settings".

As I wrote I think that is consistent with how you set up that Mac to begin with, and I'm still at a loss to understand what's wrong.

• One thing I noticed but failed to mention is that on the M4 the cupsd process seems to be always running while on our other Macs it only runs when there is a print job pending.

Not surprising since the M4 is sending the print job but it is apparently getting stuck somewhere in the CUPS filter. You can see how CUPS is working by loading http://localhost:631/ in a browser (authentication required). Don't change anything.

Printer sharing is only intended to serve as a troubleshooting step. As a solution it would be an unattractive workaround. There are less unattractive workarounds, but they're still ugly.

For now I can only point fingers at Epson. It's their driver, and I'd want them to demonstrate it works with your specific hardware with its specific macOS version.

Same USB cable?

That looks decidedly old, but you knew that already. I assume the checkbox under "install" is also un-checkable?

Have you given any consideration to logging in to CUPS and installing that printer manually, or modifying the existing entry? I am questioning even the need to authenticate with such an old printer, but that doesn't mean it may have been misconfigured somehow, and is rejecting print jobs for lack of authentication credentials that are not required and may not even be possible to provide. Authentication is typically required only for network printers, and that one doesn't even have a network interface.

http://localhost:631/admin/

Log in with your usual login credentials.

Clearly I am running out of straws at which to grasp.

That's actually very encouraging. Apple only supports AirPrint and the fact you got a senior engineer's attention means you must have impressed them.

Engineering will have you collect some data for them to digest, after which you may not hear anything for weeks, if ever. That does not necessarily mean they aren't doing anything; they're just doing it in their characteristic silence. A few months are likely to pass before any changes will be implemented, which will be in the form of a macOS update. No printer-specific details are likely to accompany it, but if they do, it will be some opaque reference to the all-encompassing and vague "security" we have all grown accustomed to seeing in their release notes.

And, the printer will magically start working.

Please let us know what they have to say. If they weren't interested, they would have said "we only support AirPrint" — and that would be all she wrote. We're not there yet.

Resetting the printing system followed by adding the printer again is sort of a last resort that should have worked. Apple Support also had you perform some similarly last resort options to not avail.

Try a different User Account if you haven't already tried it. I doubt it will change anything though.

On a scale of one to ten how attached are you to that printer? Tortured workarounds are an option; it depends on your desire to get that printer working by any means necessary vs. the technical challenge of determining the reason it isn't.

A decade-old and unsupported and non-working printer isn’t worth the immense effort already reported here.

Replace it. Preferably with an AirPrint printer.

And given the problems that get posted round here including this one, and the utter confusion that is the Epson web presence and documentation, I wouldn’t touch Epson with a barge pole.

According to our engineering team, Epson did not provide Apple with updated drivers for the latest release of macOS.

That reply only adds to the confusion. Vendors provide drivers for their products, but they are not provided exclusively to Apple. They make them available, period. Apple does not care whether they do or not.

And,

The last operating system that Epson released drivers for this printer was macOS 12 Monterey. 

You wrote (several times) that you downloaded and installed drivers from Epson, specifically for that model printer, and ostensibly for Tahoe, and I have no reason to question that. That driver appears to function with that printer on two of your Tahoe-running Macs, but not the M4.

You very reasonably followed Apple's instructions, here: Add a printer to your printer list so you can use it on Mac - Apple Support

"... If your printer isn’t compatible with AirPrint, install the latest software that came with the printer or from the manufacturer’s website."

You did that, right? Rhetorical question, no need to answer.

Despite all this effort it has led you exactly nowhere. Apple said something that seems dubious to me, points fingers at Epson for not doing something they should not have been expected to do in the first place, and Epson doesn't seem to care.

Perhaps you're the only one who does.

As much as I would like to get to the bottom of whatever problem exists, and maybe fix it, you will have to decide how far you want to go. It was the reason for asking "how attached are you to this printer". You can certainly find a way to keep it in service, but the solution I have in mind will involve some expense and time. It would not be an enormous amount of either commodity, but it's not something I would recommend unless you enjoy that sort of thing as much as I do.

Nevertheless I'll be happy to help if you are so motivated.