My photo printer got stolen today. No, not physically. It’s still here, but only because of my superhuman self-control. It’s the ability to print photos that is missing. What it performs now is a kind of artistic license, taking my photos and giving them a ridiculous purple tint before printing them. This is not what it did before. There is no reason for it to do it now. I don’t care why it’s doing it. I don’t give a ragged rip. I enjoyed a capability for printing color photos, which, though no negligence or misuse of my own, is missing today. That’s theft.

I don’t want to hear anything about how things “just wear out”. Modern inkjet printers can’t wear out because you only rent them from the printer company, paying the cost of the printer all over again every three cartridges. Let’s say instead that I have a “printer subscription” from Epson which is up-to-date. I fill my Epson printer only with Epson cartridges, in order to avoid this kind of nonsense.

Could it be the computer’s fault? Maybe. But I’m using an Apple computer running an Apple operating system on top of which an Apple photo application, iPhoto, is running, and this matched set uses something called ColorSync to ensure that the colors on the printer match the colors on the screen. Maybe Apple stole my photos.

Who knows? Who cares? If I spend my own rather precious time debugging the intricacies of these two vendors’ products, then I’m nabbed by the virtual pickpocket as well.

Bottom line: once again, due diligence and careful maintenance can’t keep the thieves out, real, virtual, or depersonalized. Don’t like it? Doesn’t matter. Take it like a man since you can’t do anything about it anyway. Or write a bitter blog entry. I can testify that this will at least make you feel better—so long as nothing steals my blog.