Apple Delays or Cancels Support for AirPrint Via Shared Printers on Macs and PCs?

[Bubba Satori]

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.

No, for the same reason we don't use Centronics "parallel" ports for printers any more.

Not being able to print is better than being able to print with a current i/o
port because a previous printer port is no longer being used? Brilliant.


Who said Kool aid logic doesn't work?
Jonestown is officially renamed Jobstown.

 

[HLdan]

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).

Excellent post. Somebody finally with a voice of reason and intelligence. "IF" the printing feature was in fact pulled, it was pulled most likely due to compatibility reasons.

Why does this forum always take things as if Apple is doing something to them out of malicious intent. Does anyone remember the iPhone 4 fiasco? Do they want it now or do they want it to work?

 

[tripjammer]

Looks like we got a lot of people jumping to conclusions....Its gonna print and it has been printing since the betas....It just might not print on a mac correctly directly....but It will though itunes like it will on windows...

People be calm...apple will come through for us...

We were never getting the white iphone....lmao!

 

[tripjammer]

Excellent post. Somebody finally with a voice of reason and intelligence. "IF" the printing feature was in fact pulled, it was pulled most likely due to compatibility reasons.

Why does this forum always take things as if Apple is doing something to them out of malicious intent. Does anyone remember the iPhone 4 fiasco? Do they want it now or do they want it to work?

I agree...but its in the gold master so it will print some kind of way...just maybe not directly on a mac...

 

[samcraig]

Excellent post. Somebody finally with a voice of reason and intelligence. "IF" the printing feature was in fact pulled, it was pulled most likely due to compatibility reasons.

Why does this forum always take things as if Apple is doing something to them out of malicious intent. Does anyone remember the iPhone 4 fiasco? Do they want it now or do they want it to work?

well it's a little late to avoid some bad PR. They announced air printing at the last conference. And IF it was pulled - you have NO IDEA what the reason is. It could be compatibility - or it could be a dozen other reasons.

 

[hugo7]

APPLE’s 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 don’t 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 HP’s 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 4’s 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.

ROTFL.... So apt, so apt

 

[Phil A.]

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

The situation appears to be as follows:

AirPrint support has been pulled from the latest Beta of OS X. If people have installed the previous Betas, then updating to the latest won't remove it, but it is not contained in the latest beta code base

AirPrint support has not been pulled from 4.2, but without OS level support, you will be limited to printing directly to printers that support the AirPrint protocol

 

[rwilliams]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

So what does iOS 4.2 bring to iPhone now AirPrint has been pulled?

Not much of anything that matters to me. AirPlay will be a nice gimmick, but I can already do that with my MacBook, so I don't really have a need to do it from my iPhone or iPod touch. So, because I don't own an iPad, I will be in no hurry to upgrade to 4.2.

 

[WestonHarvey1]

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

MAN am I tired of the "Sarcastic 'Really?'" phenomenon. It's worse than NOT! from the 90s.

 

[silentnite]

Well, this is big time set back, hoping apple works it out for whatever reason

 

[pmz]

We should find out for sure today anyway, whenever 10.6.5 is released. AirPrint will either work, or it won't.

If it don't, then 10.6.6 is likely not far away. Going to be a record time release I think.

 

[Gizmotoy]

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.

The parts that I have bolded are exactly what a printer driver does. No need to reinvent some whole new printing mechanism in iTunes, just use the drivers already present on the computer. To be clear, in your comment you describe the exact operation of a driver, but seem to want to simply call it "something iTunes does." In reality, your suggestion is that printer drivers should be included with iTunes, and that iTunes needs to be running for AirPrint to work. A reasonable solution, but I think Apple had planned on putting this functionality into the OS so it could run without iTunes open.

In any case, this would all fall under option (1) that he was claiming was a horrible solution because it required a computer to be on. I think it was merely a stopgap solution until they could get AirPrint included in more printers, and it turned out to be more difficult than they intended.

 

[HarryKeogh]

MAN am I tired of the "Sarcastic 'Really?'" phenomenon. It's worse than NOT! from the 90s.

Seriously?

 

[rwilliams]

MAN am I tired of the "Sarcastic 'Really?'" phenomenon. It's worse than NOT! from the 90s.

My man, you'd be surprised at how many people still use "NOT!".

 

[Riemann Zeta]

So this will probably end up delaying 10.6.5 yet again?

 

[HLdan]

I agree...but its in the gold master so it will print some kind of way...just maybe not directly on a mac...

Why are people saying this? The article clearly states Mac OS X and Windows.

 

[WestonHarvey1]

Seriously?

Microsoft just based an entire Windows Phone commercial on it. Newspaper headlines end with "...Really?" now, with alarming frequency. It's shrill and drives me up the wall.

And yet, Googling the phenomenon returns nothing - complete silence, as though there is not even a shred of self awareness.

 

[kingtj]

re: printer drivers on the iPad itself?

I remember back when I had a Palm III device, I could get software that allowed it to print. They accomplished it by limiting support to certain methods and printers. EG. You can use a generic Postscript driver for pretty much any laser printer that supports that standard, and another generic PCL5e driver that works with all of the HP LaserJet printers and quite a few of their inkjet printers too.

You don't need to take up a gigabyte of space with a full collection of all the OS X print drivers! They could let users selectively install ones for the printer makes/models they actually own .... or alternately, do what I mention above. Include support for a few of the most popular models and generic drivers, and just limit printing capabilities to printers within that sphere.

To carry all the printer drivers required takes up about a gigabyte, which on a 16gb device is a not insignificant amount. Airprint worked (I assume!) by handing over all the driver-based work to the shared Mac or PC, which in turn printed the document. It's really the best solution to a difficult problem, and I don't see any other way around it.

 

[Adam Young]

No AirPrint in my setup!

The combination of iOS 4.2 (8C134) + iTunes 10.1b10 + Mac OS X 10.6.5 (10H548) certainly does NOT work.
Neither does the iOS 4.2 (8C134) + iTunes 10.1b10 + Mac OS X 10.6.5 (10H531) combo.

Looks like the rumor mill was right this time.

I'm printing from my iPhone since day 1 anyway*, so no need for AirPrint over here, but it sure looked like a feature that would attract a lot of "professional" users.

* e-mail your document as an attachment with subject "print_from_iphone" to the e-mailaccount on your Mac. Set up a rule in Mail to print the attachment from all received e-mails with subject "print_from_iphone". Done.

 

[iSee]

Nooooo!!!

Geeze, I know printing is old tech, and these days I don't print nearly as much as I used to... and I hope at some point in the future we won't ever have to do it. But it's a fact of life right now.

Assuming this is true, this is a major black-eye for Apple.

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

Excellent post. Somebody finally with a voice of reason and intelligence. "IF" the printing feature was in fact pulled, it was pulled most likely due to compatibility reasons.

Why does this forum always take things as if Apple is doing something to them out of malicious intent. Does anyone remember the iPhone 4 fiasco? Do they want it now or do they want it to work?

Ah you mean Vaporware like the White iPhone and Xserve!

 

[guzhogi]

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.

Like in schools, kids in special ed have what's called an Individualized Education Plan, or IEP. I don't know the specific law, but it states that schools must keep a paper copy of anything relating the IEP, to my knowledge. This is basically so that the schools are meeting the IEP and the kids are getting an appropriate education. I don't know if you have kids, but if you do, I'm sure you want the teachers to be doing everything that's needed and expected of them.

Also, as trivial as forging document may be, there are many ways digital copies are even more so.

 

[josha]

10.6.5 on my MacBook. 4.2 GM on my iPad. Printer is made by Canon. That alone means it isn't on the list from Apple...

Printed just fine. Both printers showed up in my list on my iPad. I printed 3 copies of the same page.

The only way this is getting pulled is if something is pulled out of 10.6.5. I'm not saying it hasn't been but I highly doubt it at this point.

I agree...^ but if they do pull it and it only works with HP printers then obviously then have some sort of deal with HP where they've already installed the software etc so that consumers dont have too...

 

[andiwm2003]

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.

If we get this shared printer version of printing then we will be stuck with it for good and a real solution will never come. So in that sense you are considering only your use case and neglect the many cases of business and private use that need real printing support.

Also the shared printing does what all the print apps do and the results there are mixed. So I predict problem across the board with shared printing as well. e.g. not updated drivers on the computers, itunes not installed or up to date, no wifi access to computers for share printing in business enviroments..........

If this rumor is true then I guess my concerns are correct. If this rumor is not true we will find out in a few days if my concerns are valid.

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.

ever heard of a Dock Connector to USB cable? Or how about mini USB adaptor that we need anyway for the iPhone to comply with law?

 

[Warbrain]

I agree...^ but if they do pull it and it only works with HP printers then obviously then have some sort of deal with HP where they've already installed the software etc so that consumers dont have too...

Now that's an old post. If you find a post I made after it I confirmed it is missing from the latest 10.6.5. I doubt Apple would make a deal with just HP at this point.