Got Mac? Got Printer? You’re Not A Post Office.

My wife and I travel from St. Louis to points east and west and south from time to time.

On the last trip Carol printed out our boarding passes at home. I said, ”Wouldn’t it be cool to print stamps?”

My wife gave me that look, shook her head and said, ”You know, Jack, for a guy who travels a lot, you gotta get out more.”

You guessed it. That’s when I figured out you can print out your own stamps using your computer and a printer.

Back at home I did some digging and found out about Stamps.com. Seriously. I just didn’t know, but it all makes so much sense.

The problem is, it makes sense except that Stamps.com is Windows only; not Mac. Except for PhotoStamps.

PhotoStamps is a simple little service from Stamps.com which lets you integrate your photos from iPhoto and design your own stamps.

Then, you plug in to the Stamps.com site, upload your photos, and buy some stamps with your own photos on them.

How much? A 37-cent stamp isn’t 37-cents. It’s closer to $1.00. Actually, about 90-cents.

Do the math. A 37-cent stamp with a photo of your dog will cost you about 90-cents each.

I just want my Mac to print up postage. 37-cent stamps should cost me about 37-cents each. Instead, a sheet of 20 37-cent stamps costs $17.99.

The PhotoStamp software is simple enough. It itegrates with iPhoto and displays your iPhoto libraries. Select a photo, click, and Safari connects to Stamps.com so you can buy a sheet (or, whatever size you’ve selected).

There’s another Mac application called PictureItPostage which does pretty much the same, only with a few more bells and whistles.

You’ll save a whopping 4-cents by using PictureItPostage instead of PhotoStamps. That’s not 4-cents per stamp, it’s 4-cents when you get 20 stamps.

Don’t be too outraged. You can save a few bucks when you buy stamps in bulk, though how many photos stamps of you will be popular with the Postal Service is another issue.

All in all, after the print-your-own-airline-boarding-pass incident with Caro, printing stamps at home is a disappointment for Mac users. It should be easy. What is easy is also very expensive.

It’s remarkable to me that blind people can sue Target for not making their web site accessible to the blind, but other companies are not sued by Mac users for not making their online products accessible to Macs.

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