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Steve Jobs on AirPrint: 'Lots More Coming Soon'

syavno said:
No, I am not a whiner. There is nothing wrong with asking a legitimate question. Instead of judging others, why don't you try it yourself sometime.
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If I have a technical issue requiring the assistance of a company, I call them. If I need warranty support or customer service, I call them.

If I'm disappointed that something I felt entitled to hasn't materialized yet, I don't gripe and moan to the CEO of the company. I put on my big boy pants and I wait it out or find another way to approach the function.

As an example, I, too, was disappointed yesterday that AirPrint doesn't (yet) work like I expected it to. Instead of taking that as an affront by Steve Jobs and emailing him over my displeasure, I decided to wait it out. If I want to watch my iPhone-recorded videos on my AppleTV, I'll have to import them to iTunes as I did before.

Different strokes for different folks. At least in this instance, you have hackers and devs already stepping to the plate to plug the hole and meet the need. I'm sure Apple will be along with the features, as promised, at some point in the future.
 
MrMoore said:
I installed the demo program from Printopia, last night. So far it has work flawlessly. I probably plop down the $10 for the program. The save to a Dropbox is a great option.
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Let us not forget that MobileMe has matured (it actually works at least 95 per cent of the time, at least for me) and saving to the MobileMe iDisk is also an option with airprint.

Since Apple slides MobileMe access points in much of their software, it seems to be a better option than DropBox, at least for a Mac user.

To sweeten the deal, one of the bennies of IOS 4.2 is Apple's invitation for FREE access to the 'BackToMyMac' part of MobileMe. Of course, you must have an iPhone 4 and/or a iPad. Tricky marketing, but fair.
 
My thoughts exactly. I bought an iPad to not need to waste volumes of paper on pdfs of manuals and tech documents or on pictures. I want to be able to print to PDF or some other portable document, I would have thought that would have happened first.
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I just printed my school notes from my iPhone this morning, with Printopia. You can print websites and stuff like that. it’s not because you’ve bought an iPad that you’re never going to print anything anymore. Some things are just more practical when in paper form.
 
Buying a new printer is out of the question for a lot of home and offices.

I believe that Apple should write a generic driver that prints basic stuff to all networked/shared printers and have the vendors write their own iOS implementation of their drivers if they want end user to have access to the custom features their printer has. Heck, i'm sure Apple can write them themselves if there are no license issue to worry about.

Apple should then host these different drivers on their servers and make it so that the user can add and download only the necessary drivers they need. I mean, how many different drivers could a user possibly need to store on a mobile device?
 
saltfish said:
Buying a new printer is out of the question for a lot of home and offices.

I believe that Apple should write a generic driver that prints basic stuff to all networked/shared printers and have the vendors write their own iOS implementation of their drivers if they want end user to have access to the custom features their printer has. Heck, i'm sure Apple can write them themselves if there are no license issue to worry about.

Apple should then host these different drivers on their servers and make it so that the user can add and download only the necessary drivers they need. I mean, how many different drivers could a user possibly need to store on a mobile device?
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For the 100th time, AirPrint is driverless. This is not how it works.
 
ctdonath said:
Ya think Jobs hasn't thought of that? Maybe part of the delay in full AirPrint support is working out print server support. It _is_ a lot more complicated than you seem to think. Easy to get a limited office set up for a particular peculiar configuration; much harder to set up universal support. The point isn't just having your IT department set up shared printing for each machine, it's having anyone walk in with an unconfigured iPad and print without even specifying where the print server is.
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Again not that hard but I should of also gone after the fact that Apple Enterpise support is beyond crap. It is not even there and Apple clearly does not give a damn about that.

This screws over more people than anything else. The only issue I could see if it will not work on a network printer if no other computer is on but that is really not a big deal. They should of left it in to be able to print threw a computer since there are many older printers out there and on network printers it could again just be router threw another computer.

As for print servers that is just install the software on the print server and telling the ipad to contact the print server on the network. It is no different that having to hook in a computer to the network to print.
 
Why do all these mother F-ers think they can just email Steve Jobs?

Get a life people. Steve Jobs is not your personal information source.
 
PsykX said:
For the 100th time, AirPrint is driverless. This is not how it works.
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That was me proposing a solution to get it to work with existing printers.

Do you care to explain/propose a solution on how they would get it to work with existing printers, especially networked printers where i don't see the need to have my macbook on and running just so that i can print from my phone.
 
sishaw said:
It's been a while since I've used Linux, but can't a Linux computer print to any printer just about using CUPS, and without worrying about printer drivers? Or am I remembering incorrectly?
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CUPS is the printer infrastructure shared between OS/X and Linux. CUPS has printer drivers. Printing is a ridiculously complex thing due to the number and variety of printers. CUPS drivers can be as simple as a configuration file (for a PostScript printer) or can include actual code to drive the printers.
 
Daveoc64 said:
He doesn't show his customers any respect in his responses.

He replies with short and often offensive comments.
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Ha! Don't ever apply for a job with my company if you're offended by his replies.

When will people learn that you don't assume emotion in an email?
 
MacUserBetta said:
Ha! Don't ever apply for a job with my company if you're offended by his replies.

When will people learn that you don't assume emotion in an email?
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I'd agree that short, to the point emails are fine in a corporate environment, especially from a busy CEO. However Jobs knows his replies to the general public will be spread around the net. His emails are de facto PR, not just personal communications.
 
Daveoc64 said:
Not sure what it's like in the US, but over here writing to the CEO/Director/Whatever of a company is commonplace. You'd always get a response, even if it is just being handled by a team of people on his/her behalf.
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That's not what I've heard about how business is done in Europe. Funny story: when I was working for Apple in Cupertino in the late Eighties (after having worked for Steve for a year at NeXT), I was at one of the then-traditional Friday-afternoon beer busts on the Apple campus. There was a group of folks from the London School of Economics, who had been touring a number of companies in Silicon Valley, in attendance (good scheduling, to wind up at Apple at the right time :). I was chatting with a few of them, and they remarked on how different the accessibility of American CEOs was from European General Managers - the troops in Europe _never_ saw those exalted personages. It was exactly at that point that John Scully walked up to me and said "Hi, Dennis - how's your project going?". British jaws dropped.
 
Well I gotta prefer short, concise, to the point answer rather than a politician’s answer.
 
ctwise said:
CUPS is the printer infrastructure shared between OS/X and Linux. CUPS has printer drivers. Printing is a ridiculously complex thing due to the number and variety of printers. CUPS drivers can be as simple as a configuration file (for a PostScript printer) or can include actual code to drive the printers.
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So someone could take CUPS project source build a very light OS to support it and get it accept a PDF that then spin that out to printer, with maybe a small web interface for selecting the printer or loading a driver for an obscure printer. Then sell an airprint support dongle for any printer.

I'm guessing Apple realised that if they added OS support for hosting a non-Airprint printer then they can't every take that out. They can't make network printing easier on the Mac by making them use Airprint either.

Surely they knew by including all tools in dev builds then dropping it from such an open source system it would be reverse engineered in very short order and released as third party tools. This way they don't have to support using a mac as a go between and therefore can take advantage of airprint on the mac as well.

I'm sure the next server OS is bound to have airprint hosting in the Print Server.
I could see an updated to the Airports to add ability to host an old printer on Airprint. Don't know if the hardware in the old Airports would handle it as only software but put a modern ARM chip in them and romp it in.
 
Daveoc64 said:
What if your printer isn't connected to a Mac?

Why pay for something that should be free - and that Apple could pull support for in the next release of iOS?
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At 10 bucks it's hardly a major expense to get it now if you want it. It does more than the functionality in the beta as well:
It can print to any printer on the network - not just the one attached to the Mac it is installed on.
It can save the print as a pdf or jpg on the Mac
It can send it to your DropBox (and I asked about adding iDisk and they have put on list for next revision)

Yes, it is only for Macs but... this is Macrumors after all:)
 
What will probably also happen is that some enterprising Linux geeks develop a cool "fake AirPrint printer" which installs on the Linux server you have running in your closet (and hence, one year from now, comes standard with all new NASes and Wireless routers), presents itself as an AirPrint-compatible printer, and forwards the document to your real printer somewhere else on your LAN.
 
The whole "oooh, Steve wrote sixteen words to a mere mortal!" thing is getting really, and I mean really, old.
 
flopticalcube said:
It worked on previous beta OSX releases and works with a simple reinstall of some files that Apple removed on the final release. It's not a big deal if you have OSX but a bit odd for Apple to remove. Maybe the printer companies want everyone to buy a new printer.
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Or maybe they hit a snag and didn't want to release a buggy feature. I would imagine it'll be ready in the near future, but that won't stop people from pouting about it for a month.

I seriously doubt they pulled it last minute so they could charge us for it and force us to buy new printers.
 
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