It turns out AirPlay might not be the only iOS 4.2 feature not quite ready for primetime. Or, perhaps, my expectations are too great. Regardless, AirPrint has let me down. It’s a new Apple protocol designed to enable wireless printing from iOS mobile devices. And Apple has accurately billed it: requiring a compatibility AirPrint-enabled printers… as you cannot relay print jobs through an Airport Extreme or Time Capsule.
One of the primary reasons I overpaid for an AEBS back in the day was to turn any USB printer into a local wireless printer. I’d hoped and assumed AirPlay would maintain that tradition. But, alas, it wasn’t meant to be — our AEBS-connected laser printer is not seen by my iPhone. But you figure this sort of functionality has to be on the roadmap, right?
At the end of the day, this isn’t a huge deal… merely an observation. As there’s probably only a handful of instances in a given year I pine to print from a pocketable device. (Although, it’s somewhat amusing given what I was capable of doing with my Palm V about ten years ago.) Whereas, I’d say wireless printing from an iPad is much more significant. I’ve been contemplating replacing my mom’s Mac mini with an iPad and these new print capabilities push me further in that direction. Yet this current AirPrint limitation wouldn’t really play into the equation one way or another.
Click to enlarge:
One assumes Apple will fix AirPrint in a future upgrade, but you can fix it yourself right now for eight bucks with the third-party app FingerPrint.
We own two 1-3 year old models of HP networked printers. They are great devices. But to my disappointment, AirPrint doesn’t support them, either. Not worth buying new printers just to support this feature. And I agree that this is disappointing.
If you have your printer hooked up to a Mac:
http://www.ecamm.com/mac/printopia/
– found it this morning and it works. I just have my Mac mini as a print-server and it happily prints to my HP laser printer.
“as you cannot relay print jobs through an Airport Express or Time Capsule.”
FWIW, even when/if Apple fixes AirPrint, (or if you use FingerPrint now), you still won’t be able to literally relay print jobs through an Airport Express or Time Capsule.
The way AirPrint will work when/if fixed, (and the way FingerPrint works now), is to relay print jobs through the print drivers on an OS X box on your LAN.
So having an Airport Express or Time Capsule is irrelevant. All that matters is having a printer you can print to from an OS X box, and having that OS X box awake on the LAN.
Chucky, you provide a wealth of information… and should start a column here. ;) However, I disagree with your second point. Given all that AEBS and Time Capsule are capable of, surely they can load up or retrofit the required AirPrint proxy/drivers.
Greg, when I purchased my new Macbook Air last week there was a wireless HP printer I could get for free (after $100 rebate). I sort of assumed it would see an AirPrint firmware upgrade at some point. But I’ve sworn off HP printers and went with a Epson or Canon AIO instead. But maybe some/all of yours will see an upgrade at some point. Then again, HP would probably prefer you buy a new model.
“Given all that AEBS and Time Capsule are capable of, surely they can load up or retrofit the required AirPrint proxy/drivers.”
I’d tend to strongly doubt that current model AEBS and Time Capsules will ever be able to do that. They’re just fancy routers.
You still need a driver for your individual printer, and as of today, that driver needs to be hosted on a real computer.
In the year 2050, there will be enough room on iOS devices to host individual print drivers, and the issue will be moot. In the year 2020, Apple would love printer manufacturers to be able to parse a PDF file and cut the individual printer drivers out of the mix.
But as of 2010, you need a real computer in the mix. (Unless you buy one of the handful of printers that can handle the rasterized format iOS natively sends.)
Dave, there is absolutely zero chance of the of that. The way that printer sharing via the AirPort/TimeCapsule works is via a USB proxy. It still requires printer specific drivers to exist on the host Macintosh. The whole point of AirPrint was for Apple to avoid having to deal with printer drivers on iOS, in order for iOS to print directly through an AEBS to a USB attached printer would involve dealing with a whole new set of printer drivers on another embedded platform the printer vendors have no experience with and does not currently have a public toolchain or SDK. If they are willing to do that it would be simpler to do a traditional printer driver model for iOS the first place.
The point of the proxies (both the USB proxy in the AEBS, and AirPrint proxy that was going to be Mac OS X) is to leverage the existing printer drivers on Mac OS X, because getting the printer manufacturers to do any work on their drivers is an immense headache for OS vendors.
Still disagree… I believe the intention of AirPrint is to provide a common/universal protocol reducing the need for proprietary drivers for simple print tasks. From Apple’s site:
There’s no software to download, no drivers to install, and no cables to connect.
“No cables required” means exactly that. AirPrint printing is 100 percent wireless. iPad automatically locates and connects to AirPrint-enabled printers on your wireless network.
Update: Louis puts it in more perspective for me. Hm. Still think Apple could leverage any one of the hundreds of print drivers (Apple already hosts in the cloud) onto an AEBS. Especially as we don’t need full-on capabilities to manage the printer, just something like Postscript. We shall see. Or not!
The backstory, FWIW: AirPrint worked fine in all of the 10.6.5 betas. Apple removed the functionality in the final 10.6.5 release for reasons that no one understands.
The developers who are supplying third-party AirPrint functionality just reverse engineered what Apple was doing in the 10.6.5 betas.
So all this means that AirPrint for all printers will return in 10.6.6, or Apple has a financial deal with HP to try to drive sales of native AirPrint printers, and Steve-o is even more evil than previously suspected. 10.6.6 should be released quite soon (in order to push out the semi-evil Mac App Store), so answers will be forthcoming shortly.
“Still think Apple could leverage any one of the hundreds of print drivers (Apple already hosts in the cloud) onto an AEBS”
If this happens, (and I’m somewhat doubtful for a variety of reasons), it most certainly won’t be retroactive to current AEBS models.
Dave, none of the printer drivers Apple has in the cloud are remotely useable in that way. They are compiled for Intel systems, written using Mac OS X only APIs, and Apple is only given binary drops of them by the printer vendors, so Apple doesn’t have the source code. In other words, all those existing printer drivers they can download on demand for Mac OS X cannot be leveraged without a lot of work from Apple AND all of the printer companies.
I think it is more likely Apple will push for printer vendors to adopt AirPrint quickly, and support printing to AirPrint printers from Mac OS X so that they can have avoid 3rd party drivers on Mac OS X as well, which would solve a lot of headaches for Apple in the long run.
Yes, there are hacky technical solutions (like using ghostscript based drivers), but there are all sorts of reasons I do not see that happening.
In this case, printopia (as noted above) is your friend.
that said, I don’t think apple has EVER yet at least communicated that USB connected printers to an AE or AEBS would be given print through functionality with airprint. It SHOULD happen, but it wasn’t ever on the currently communicated list of expected functionalities.
tivoboy, they haven’t as far as I know. Without thinking through the technical implications, however, it seemed like something obvious. But Louis and Chucky have set me straight and I agree what is needed are new AirPrint printers (or retrofitted models) in conjunction with an AEBS update – that seems reasonable. Although explaining the difference between a wireless AirPrint printer and a USB-connected one would probably not play out so well. So now I’m of the opinion that you’ll always need a wireless AirPrint printer to take advantage of this feature.
The only thing I don’t like about Printopia:
Seems like it should have just been part of an OS X update.
While I’m greatful the company made the print driver and I gave them my $10 (and don’t mind doing so). It still seems like this should have been an obvious solution for Apple with Mac OS X.
What bugs me is that AirPrint doesn’t seem to work with that decades-old universal standard: Postscript. At least Apple won’t fess up that it does. My current iPod Touch 2G doesn’t support AirPrint so I can’t test it.
I have a standalone networked (ethernet) Postscript printer that uses Bonjour for discovery (and supports TCPIP printing as well).
With postscript, it isn’t like you have printer driver chaos: My son’s old iBook, running MacOS 9.x, can print just fine to this printer using a very old, generic postscript driver (from Apple!) by addressing it directly via its local IP (Bonjour won’t run under MacOS 9.x).
Add in Bonjour (which is what I use on my Intel Macs and my XP box for the same printer), it seems to me this should be low hanging fruit for AirPrint. This printer is always on the network and would be perfect for my next iOS device, if Apple supported it.
What’s the deal?
Just noticed that your screenshot has me in it. It didn’t register the first time I looked… :)
“So all this means that AirPrint for all printers will return in 10.6.6, or Apple has a financial deal with HP to try to drive sales of native AirPrint printers, and Steve-o is even more evil than previously suspected.”
-Here’s hoping Chucky’s right. Otherwise- I’m looking ahead to Wi-Fi Direct. Printing is rare, but when you need it…
I wanted to ensure sure all of our readership is aware of your Puke bias. ;) Also, I was testing/determining which screens the Print option appears on. And wonder if it should even be visible without having found/configured a compatible printer. As is, it’s a pretty prominent sales pitch for HP gear…
“Here’s hoping Chucky’s right”
Even if Apple doesn’t bring OS X based AirPrint back in 10.6.6, there are a multitude of cheap shareware alternatives available. And given how trivial it is to to have an OS X box advertise the service on Bonjour, if Apple makes clear that it’s out of the game in 10.6.6, I’d expect a freeware OS X util to quickly appear.
Further, given that 10.6.6 is likely close to release, you could just use the trial periods on the various shareware alternatives until it arrives without paying any money.
In short, free AirPrint is essentially here today. The user just has to do a small amount of work to set things up.
As long as you’re willing to run a computer fulltime as a print server… ;)
It dawn on me this morning after upgrading my iPad and iPhone to the new 4.2.1 firmware that Apple always seems to promise these grand features at their keynotes. And it seems most of the time they seem to pull a subset of the most wanted feature out before releasing it. Are they really any better then say Microsoft at promising something and then not delivering given features? Now, that being said I have played on both side of the fence and still do for work and personal and choose Apple every time. Are we as consumers expecting too much from the OS vendors by taking their word for it? What do you all think?
“As long as you’re willing to run a computer fulltime as a print server…”
Give your Time Capsule to your mom. Buy a Mac Mini. Now that they’ve made the RAM user accessible, there’s no excuse not to.
Use it as a compact, low power, always on server for Time Machine, iOS Print Services, iTunes, and anything else you don’t want an adventure into your Linux server to handle.
You could even stick it under your TV and check out some of the options for OS X (and Windows) based HTPC’s.
Seriously, god created the Mini for households with OS X and iOS devices. You are one of those households.
“You could even stick it under your TV and check out some of the options for OS X (and Windows) based HTPC’s.”
And on that tangent, it’s worth mentioning that the Plex Nine betas actually work, pretty much straight out of the box. And if you get FIOS in your new digs, you can populate Plex Nine with material from your TiVo…
Eh, if I’m investing in a new server of sorts I’m going with Windows Media Center (nettop, Zino, etc) and a second Xbox (to cover three TVs). Wonder whatever happened to the HDHomeRun CableCARD edition? Although the idea of giving my mom the Time Machine is a good one – she operates without a net and obviously offloads her tech management to me. But she’d probably be well served by a simple and inexpensive Mozy account to cover her small collection of files.
Dave,
Just use Printopia. I know you don’t want to leave a computer running all the time however, it is a nice piece of software.
http://www.ecamm.com/mac/printopia/faq.html
“Q: What printers will work with Printopia?
A: Most any printer that you can print to with your Mac will also be shared to your iOS devices. This includes printers connected to your Mac via USB, printers connected to a wireless router, AirPort, Time Capsule, and even network printers. Your Mac must be turned on in order for Printopia to function.
“
“Use it as a compact, low power, always on server for Time Machine, iOS Print Services, iTunes, and anything else you don’t want an adventure into your Linux server to handle.
You could even stick it under your TV and check out some of the options for OS X (and Windows) based HTPC’s”
This is what I do. One of the best purchases I have made is that mini. I picked up one almost a year ago from Apple online (refurb unit). I’ve got two Drobos on it, a printer, a scanner, it’s hooked to my TV for Hulu, Netflix, Rev3, etc, it’s basically the hub of my home.
Even better – everything just works. I’m not trying to make some 3rd party iTunes-like open-source/semi-support app run on a NAS and having it sometimes work and sometimes not. I just run iTunes on it and use that as the media server.
Brad, can you access the scanner from other computers or do you use the TV as the display for that function? Hm.
“Eh, if I’m investing in a new server of sorts I’m going with Windows Media Center”
You can do that with a Mini. It’ll boot W7.
And Plex Nine is actually worth a look in combo with FIOS/TiVo. It actually manages to auto-magically fetch metadata and playback 1080i. And it’ll serve your iOS devices, both LAN and WAN. It’s a better low hassle solution than W7MC, IMHO. (W7MC only makes sense to me if you want to directly hook it up to a CableCARD, which is an interesting, if massive, project.)
But Plex Nine aside, you’re ripe for a Mini. You’ve got enough Apple gear to make it worthwhile. And it’ll actually save you money in the long run as it’ll allow you to avoid buying crippled Apple accessories like Time Capsules…
“Brad, can you access the scanner from other computers or do you use the TV as the display for that function? Hm.”
Dunno what Brad does, but you can remote desktop into the Mini…
Man I used to only buy HP laserjet printers, but one too many failed printers (quality went down hill over the years as far as I’m concerned) drove me to a Brother at the moment. Sorry, not looking back even for this.
As a result I simply won’t be using this feature. If I need to print I’ll pull out a laptop. I have DropBox on everything anyway so I’m used to printing from a different machine. Easy enough.
While I could install something along the lines of the above, I’d just rather not. I’ve got enough crap running on my desktop PC as it is thanks. I hardly print anything anymore anyway.
I also want to point out that Apple has been tremendously successful selling iPads and laptops to less tech savvy people who expect it to ‘just work’. None of these people are going to hunt out a freeware printer driver or keep their laptop on to make this work. They’ll just consider the feature broken. Which it is.
I too don’t quite understand why a Wi-Fi enabled printer that can handle postscript doesn’t qualify here. When did Apple jump in bed with Adobe and HP?
Anyway, the not really implemented state of both AirPlay and AirPrint has me unimpressed and waiting for another update.
Dave –
You can share the scanner through the Sharing Preferences and use Image Capture to get to the scanner remotely.
This is somewhat limited in features but it works. You don’t get all of the fancy scanner features you’d normally see in the specialized scanner software.
If I need to scan something with a little more control I use Epson’s scanner software via screen sharing and then just dump the results to a shared bucket.
Doing it this way works really well for the occasional scans such as receipts or the odd photo. If you’re trying to scan in a shoebox of photos you’ll want to plug the scanner directly into the Mac and just sit down and do it – you’ll need to be right next to the scanner to put each photo into it anyway.