I wouldn't have used this very often, though it would have been a nice feature to have on the rare occasions I'd want it. I hope we'll see it in a future update if this rumour doesn't turn out to be false, or it's just been removed from the beta for temporary reasons.
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Apple Delays or Cancels Support for AirPrint Via Shared Printers on Macs and PCs?
- Thread starter timothevs
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You won't need to print anything to board a plane soon. Some airlines already accept boarding passes emailed to iPhones (see my earlier post above). At the end of the day, all they do is scan a barcode - so no need for it to be on paper.
the entire concept of printing to a shared printer that needs either a Mac or iTunes running is flawed. Many companies won't allow you to install iTunes on company machines, nobody will buty a new printer just so that their guest or a field engineer can print something. This entire concept is flawed and it's good that it gets scrapped. That leaves room for a real solution to printing.
So instead of providing some new functionality and then improving on it - you think it's just better to kill the new functionality and wait indefinitely until they figure it out.
I strongly disagree. And find it silly when people either only consider their use case or declare that adding functionality (whether they would use it or not) is bad.
A tablet with a USB port?
I just sent an email to Steve.
"Steve, the iPad2. Put a USB port on it and charge twice as much."
Hobby bag of $100 billion in the bank.
Christ you're a fool.
Version of 10.6.5 that came with the first 4.2 beta allows it. The most recent doesn't.
Printing is easily the biggest pain in the ass on any platform. It's a kludge and complicated. To implement a system that passes the printing off to a capable computer makes it even more difficult. Apple likely ran into issues and decided to hold off on support for printers connected to computers.
Maybe I install iTunes on my machines by default, but the AirPrint setup actually requires iTunes for printer sharing?! I thought it was built-in to OS X, and as an add-on for Windows.
Care to clarify?
As we are 10% into the 21st Century (what many/most of us once considered "The Future" featuring dramatic shifts in technology), I am inclined toward the "paperless office" view including the wholesale elimination of paper. Nonetheless, paper persists and sometimes we must print, including from the iPad, and that means using the bulk of existing printers (though I was holding off getting a WiFi printer pending AirPrint support limitations).
So I am interested in what constitutes a "real solution". Printing has long been a problem, fraught with obnoxious drivers and half-baked workarounds re: memory & processing power limitations. If any company can re-examine the problem to its core and formulate a good solution, it's Apple.
I doubt that Apple pulled the featured. Let us just wait and seem shall we?
Btw, the pic is hilarious and is from the british TV series IT crowd
Btw, the pic is hilarious and is from the british TV series IT crowd
So true. I do love Apple for their attention to the user experience. I'm happy to wait for it to work correctly. Since they officially announced this feature, I imagine they will make some official announcement on its status (can't imagine it is actually canceled).
What "law" are you referring to?
It's even easier to lose a piece of paper and rather a trivial thing to forge it.
When ever I travel, I usually "print" a copy of any relevant emails and documentation to PDF and drop it in my Dropbox. It can't be lost then because I can pull the relevant file up at any time on my phone or any internet connected device.
The only document I actually needed a hard copy of was my airline boarding pass. In that case, I just went old school but all they did was scan the bar code. My ID and boarding pass were only checked and stamped when passing through security.
Now, since the bar code is just an alpha numerical string, this could have been typed into the airline registration/boarding system at any time. What will be very interesting is when I can show the relevant person the bar code on my iPhone and have them scan it from there.
Just in!!!!!!!
APPLEs press announcement!!!!!!!
We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in ink, and it is both simple and surprising.
Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of ink strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given ink strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of ink bars when they grip their printer in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak ink levels, but they dont know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in printer ink is because their high bars were never real in the first place.
To fix this, we are adopting HPs recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given ink level. The real ink level remains the same, but the printer bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the levels they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.
We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4.
We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same the iPhone 4s printing performance is the best we have ever seen. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your ink more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused.
As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone, iPad to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.
Via: Apple.
APPLEs press announcement!!!!!!!
We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in ink, and it is both simple and surprising.
Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of ink strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given ink strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of ink bars when they grip their printer in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak ink levels, but they dont know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in printer ink is because their high bars were never real in the first place.
To fix this, we are adopting HPs recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given ink level. The real ink level remains the same, but the printer bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the levels they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.
We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4.
We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same the iPhone 4s printing performance is the best we have ever seen. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your ink more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused.
As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone, iPad to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.
Via: Apple.
No, for the same reason we don't use Centronics "parallel" ports for printers any more.
I literally just stepped onto a plane (still sitting at the gate) having used this. It's fantastic. That said, the ability to print would still be nice.
IF this delay is real...IF
then Jobs is really going to lose some cred in my mind, and probably others. This year he has stood on the stage and announced:
1) Unlimited, no contract, ATT 3G service for the iPad for $29/mo.
It was pulled a little over a month after the 3G launch
2) White iPhone.
Initially delayed for a month then Jobs said at the iPhone 4 antennagate announcement in mid July that the white phone would be shipping in a couple weeks. It didn't, and now it's delayed until spring 2011.
3) iOS 4.2 ability to print to any printer connected to Mac or PC.
Since it's still a rumor can't really say anything, but Jobs cred is on the line. It's one thing when features are announced "softly" on the web site or press release, but when the CEO comes out and continually makes product announcements that turn into vapor months later something is askew.
then Jobs is really going to lose some cred in my mind, and probably others. This year he has stood on the stage and announced:
1) Unlimited, no contract, ATT 3G service for the iPad for $29/mo.
It was pulled a little over a month after the 3G launch
2) White iPhone.
Initially delayed for a month then Jobs said at the iPhone 4 antennagate announcement in mid July that the white phone would be shipping in a couple weeks. It didn't, and now it's delayed until spring 2011.
3) iOS 4.2 ability to print to any printer connected to Mac or PC.
Since it's still a rumor can't really say anything, but Jobs cred is on the line. It's one thing when features are announced "softly" on the web site or press release, but when the CEO comes out and continually makes product announcements that turn into vapor months later something is askew.
Well, you've been clear you hate the only two currently-available solutions:
1) Pass document off to Mac or Windows to deal with drivers (the computer has to be on!)
2) Print directly to a printer that supports AirPrint (I have to buy a new printer!)
You want to print directly to printers from your device, but how are you going to connect to this printer? A hardware dongle will be lost, or at in another location when you really need it, and relatively few people would purchase it. How are you going to ensure you always have the right drivers? The CUPS drivers are several GB, so on limited storage devices you'd have no choice but to carry around a subset of all the drivers. This solution would be a support nightmare for Apple, with users not able to understand why they can print on some devices and not others.
Apple had the right strategy on this: Use (1) as a temporary solution until printers like (2) become ubiquitous. Unfortunately it sounds like it's harder than they anticipated.
to save you the trouble, i'm sure apple will resell compatible printers at the Apple Store
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/09/15airprint.html
I'll be very disappointed if this doesn't return at some point. I was looking forward to easily being able to print any document to a PDF via CUPS-PDF. Better would be if Apple just added "Print to PDF" directly to iOS.
I love it when people put BS quotes in Steve Jobs' mouth - makes 'em seem really smart.
No-one has any idea why - or even if - AirPrint has been dropped, and yet the armchair CEOs are out in force - the same ones who would be first in line to put Jobs against the wall if Apple released an unstable AirPrint that didn't work properly.
No wonder the entire industry laughs at Apple users.
Maybe its me, but I thought a simple solution would be for the Airprint to send the raw data to iTunes, and then iTunes would then convert this data and present it to the printer as it is printing the job from itself.
This would in turn get around the whole issue of drivers, as it would means the host device printing would have the driver already configured and running on the computer.
All that would be required is that iTunes would be able to convert this raw data to the format that is required to send it to the printer, thus making the driver issue a non issue.
As long as itunes knows how the data format is when its being sent from the device it should be able to put it into a format that could then be printed from iTunes.
This is a segment on MacRumors we call: Really Apple, Really? with Seth & Amy
Seth: Really Apple, Really?
Amy: Really Apple, Really?
This has been Really Apple, Really? with Seth & Amy
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Seth: Really Apple, Really?
Amy: Really Apple, Really?
This has been Really Apple, Really? with Seth & Amy
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No no, I think everyone should jump to conclusions and criticise Apple without even the faintest clue of what's going on.
Sprinkle a few "You're xxxing it wrong." jokes, add a couple of jibes at Apple worshippers who buy whatever is put in front of them, and we have a typical MacRumors thread. All we need is that Ltd/Quadra guy to come in and claim that Apple are right to drop printing, and that the whole industry will drop printing by the end of next year, and we'll be good to go.