The longer-term goal is a world where you don't have to install 2GB of printer drivers (or download-on-demand printer drivers) on every computer you ship. We *should* be to the point where you can just send a PDF file to a printer over the network and expect it to accurately print it.
Assuming Apple did a good job of designing Airprint, 5 years from now the driverless goal will have been achieved, as most printers seem to have a useful lifespan of about 5 years (10 years for higher end printers.)
Not going to happen. While this will allow you to print a PDF, you would still have all those printer-specific differentiating features that the printer manufacturers market to you. And all those specific features will still need specialized software running on your computer to access them. So while watered-down access to your printer without a driver will become a reality, if you went out and bought a full-featured all-in-one printer you are going to want to do things like:
- Adjust color and page border settings
- Adjust print quality settings
- Adjust paper types to use
- Adjust paper sizes to use
- Choose duplex mode
- Transfer files to an attached SD card (or provide network mounting of it)
- Scan a document to the printer's built-in scanner
- Fax a document to the printer's built-in fax
- Indicate # of document pages to print per physical page
- etc.... etc.... etc....
I'm sure some of you have printers that have features I have not even touched upon. The point is.... unless HP, Canon, Brother, and Lexmark are ready for their products to become commodities (which I doubt), then the driverless printer is a long way away.
If you remember, years ago we got a standardized SQL programming language and we got ODBC; however, every relational database manufacturer still has vendor-specific features and a vendor-specific driver that you need to access those features.
You only get the watered-down version in the standardized interface to anything and hence the proprietary interface will always exist and reside and be managed on your computer.