You also said "even compared to Linux". That's interesting. That statement there gives the impression that you're more interested in defending your own beliefs and/or choices rather than being truly interested in explaining to us what OS has objectively terrible hardware support. "even compared to Linux" sounds like something an apologist would say. Then when you added in the "think different" line you made it seem even more like your comment was based off some kind of blind loyalty to Linux rather than loyalty to facts.
Me? I've used Mac, a handful of Linux distros, and Windows for a long time. I don't know which has the best or worse hardware support but I do know when someone says something based on what camp they're in rather than what the facts are.
Don't read too far into things, and "...loyalty to facts" eye roll.
Anyway, It's pretty common knowledge to Linux users that hardware/driver support on Linux can be a challenge. Sometimes things work right out of the box, other times you have to do a lot of work and a lot of Googling.
That being said, I don't agree with the parent. For basic hardware needs, Windows and OSX have a fairly high success rate of plug-and-play functionality. For me on Linux, it's about 50/50.
In Linux you very rarely have to install any driver. True, some hardware remains unsupported, but the list of compatible hardware without any installation required is pretty long. On windows, you'll need to install stuff for most of new hardware you try to plug in, no matter what.
Anyway, this has been almost 100% true up from 10.3 through 10.6.x. Recent developments both on Apple's as well as on MS's side have closed the gap between the two systems quite a bit. I still prefer OSX but it's gotten close. The real reason I continue to buy macs nowadays is the hardware quality.
This. It's almost as if Linux is a collection of parts and tools from which a sufficiently good designer can build a usable desktop whereas OS X is a usable desktop. That's an exaggeration, but for me there is some truth to it.
Note that Linux was my only desktop from 1997 through 2009.
I'd say the hardware support is fine for what little customisability Apple allows on the hardware that they sell. Perhaps the Mac Pro might have some issues with internal cards (I honestly wouldn't know ...), but those devices are not affordable for 99% of the people.
Low end printers and scanners in particular are notorious for skimping on the logic in the device itself and depending on a large blob of Windows driver code, with manufacturers that couldn't care less about supporting anything other than Windows.
In my experience only Windows 7 has passable MTP support. On Linux I had mixed results with gvfs and mtpfs (slow and crashy). jmtpfs [1] is a nice replacement, though. Google also released an application for OS X [2] but I can't try it since I don't own an Apple computer.
My solution to the problem was to install a WebDAV server (such as [3]) on my device (Galaxy Nexus) and access it wirelessly.
[1]: http://research.jacquette.com/jmtpfs-exchanging-files-between-android-devices-and-linux/
[2]: http://www.android.com/filetransfer/
[3]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.theolivetree.webdavserverSupport for the USB Mass Storage protocol has been deprecated in Android in favor of MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) starting with Ice Cream Sandwich.
The experience in Windows and on Linux is just as poor with this phone. (I love the phone, though.)
This is 100% to blame on Samsung, sorry.
Even though my Samsung phone is seen as a USB device (and it works on MAC OS X), but maybe in the newer models they removed this functionality (and called it a feature)
People may complain that iPhones need iTunes but then again it's iTunes not the gigantic pile of crap that is Kies
OS X has perfectly find support for media devices, and has worked fine with every digital camera, SD Card or other card reader, etc, that I've attached via USB in the past decade!
I have seen problems with third party hardware that required its own driver (poorly written generally) or that was half assed crap that was designed to work with windows but marketed as supporting standards like "USB".
Meanwhile, Linux has trouble dealing with the computer itself, let alone getting hardware attached to it. Constant pain in the ass.
Currently I'm in a country in a different hemisphere from the USA. I walked into a store and bought and off the shelf no-name brand displayport to HDMI adapter. Worked no problem.
I've gotten used to being able to do that... and haven't had much trouble getting things to work with OS X in years.
Course, I also stopped buying things that require custom drivers-- that's a clear sign you're not going to have a good time.
To claim that Linux is better in this regard is, quite frankly, asinine.
Your comment looks about as asinine to me as the as the parent comment does to you.
That really has nothing to do with the OS you're running. The OS isn't driving the DisplayPort<->HDMI protocol conversion in any way (your 'no-name' brand adapter is probably relying on DP++ and just passing through the HDMI signal anyway).
This is like saying your VGA cable is compatible with Macs with a VGA port. Of course it is.
The problem is that hardware often doesn't really conform to standards, even those it claims to.
One of the reasons device support in Linux (and other OSes which target a wide range of platforms) is difficult, is that it's necessary in practice to cope with and have workarounds for buggy and out-of-spec hardware and firmware. Just "coding to the standard" isn't good enough.
Such buggy hardware/firmware is rarely documented as such, and finding these problems and the appropriate way to handle them is painful and difficult work. In some cases the only practical way to figure out what actually works is to reverse-engineer what Windows does (the hardware manufacturers generally make sure that Windows works with their hardware, but rarely make such information public).
Apple's main goal is their own hardware, over which they obviously have a lot of control and information, so they really don't need to worry so much about this.
A device can follow the USB standards (and be labeled as such) while still requiring a special driver. The two are not mutually exclusive.