iPad Pro PC Replacement

[Dranix]

I guess the problem lies not with AirPrint but with the implementation on some printers.

 

[Azzin]

I'm actually considering getting a 128Gb IPP to replace my current MBP and Thunderbolt Display setup.

I would sell my TBD & MBP and get myself another 27" HDMI monitor to connect the IPP to.

I'd also get myself a nice BT keyboard to use and I think I'd be away.

I have a Dropbox Pro account and use iCloud to backup my iDevices too, so I think I'll be ok for storage.

I don't have a lot of locally stored apps on my MBP and most stuff I do is web/Cloud based.

I'd probably get the 128 over the 32Gb, purely to allow me to add video files to it for when I travel, but if it wasn't for that I reckon I could get away with a 32Gb.

I've just realised there's a fatal flaw in my plan-no Apple Trackpad support.

Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.

 

[Krevnik]

I guess the problem lies not with AirPrint but with the implementation on some printers.

Ding, Ding, Ding.

AirPrint is basically bundling 2 technologies that already existed, IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) and Bonjour. The secret sauce is that the AirPrint network service advertises mimetypes (e.g. application/pdf) for what it supports. This is what enables the driverless printing, by making it explicit in the discovery step what formats are supported, you can standardize a bit on a set of formats and use the ideal one for the content you are printing.

The three common ones for AirPrint are: PDF, JPEG, and something called UNIRAST. UNIRAST appears to be a simple packed bitmap with some basic encoding tricks to make the files smaller (repeating pixels, repeating lines, early exit from a line). This format seems specifically aimed at being very CPU-friendly to decode and print, something you want if this code is to run on low-end printers.

So what I'm picking up on so far on how AirPrint works is that iOS will use PDF when available (since UIKit produces PDF content from the printing APIs to hand off to the subsystem). If the printer it is printing to doesn't support PDF, it will then rasterize it into JPEG or UNIRAST, as supported by the printer. UNIRAST is the better choice, as it is built to allow for high-dpi printing without any loss in quality, but is proprietary. That said, in the case of something like the Samsung shown, it's hard to tell from just a print out exactly what's going on. It'd be a bit easier to tell what is going on from the Bonjour data associated with the AirPrint service (since that will tell us what formats are supported).

But here's the core part: Any printer that supports PDF is responsible for rasterization of the text. If it is wrong, it's the printer's fault. If the printer only supports JPEG, then AirPrint is not going to be ideal on that printer, since you are dealing with lossy input at any DPI. If the printer supports UNIRAST, then it's a bit fuzzier, but the reverse engineering suggests that iOS prefers to use 600 DPI for it, which may be fine, but higher quality printers may still beat it out if given PostScript/PCL or a PDF.

But in general, output quality will be: PDF > UNIRAST > JPEG. And cheaper printers are less likely to support PDF. The Samsung doesn't even support PostScript, so PDF is very likely unsupported, and likely part of the problem with its output.

/rant

 

[Osty]

I don't have an AirPrint printer so I can't comment on the quality thereof. I have however set up a 'wireless' print server using my Mac mini, my laser printer and DropBox. I've created a shared dropbox folder, which the Mac mini watches, and a simple script that prints out any new document that lands in there. I could go Mac-less I suppose and do the same thing with a Raspberry Pi but I'm no hurry to go iOS only even if I'm using it more as a primary OS.