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What's the true AirPrint story?

TheGrudge

TheGrudge

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 22, 2010
77
7
I've been scouring this forum and various tech websites for a few days now. There are rumors flying around about AirPrint being cancelled, not being cancelled (as per SJ himself), working with iTunes open, not working with iTunes open, working if you modify a few files in Leopard...and so on.

All I know is I have an iPad running iOS 4.2 (I'm a dev), with Snow Leopard 10.6.5, and the beta version of the next iTunes -- and AirPrint displays "No Printer Found" when I try to print from an application. My printer is connected to my iMac and printer sharing is ON.

So - should this be working or not?
 
Essentially AirPrint will work to newer AirPrint certified HP Wireless Printers.

They for some reason decided to remove AirPrint for 'shared' printers on Mac 10.6.5


You can add the functionality back into 10.6.5 with a simple hack
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=11401113#post11401113



No-one can at this stage say if the Official Release of 4.2 will be different to the GM version and that you wont need this hack and all will be well - however it seems unlikely.
 
It is possible that Apple just decided to split the AirPrint/Printer Sharing functionality into its own update rather than have it part of the 10.6.5 update. Maybe that update will come out the same time 4.2 is released to the public.

Might even bring 10.5 compatibility.
 
I'm thinking it might be like the windows version and be an option you enable through itunes.

Works perfectly with my printer shared via windows 7. Maybe itunes 10.1 for mac will have this option?
 
MacRumorUser said:
No-one can at this stage say if the Official Release of 4.2 will be different to the GM version and that you wont need this hack and all will be well - however it seems unlikely.
Click to expand...
As I'm sure you know, Airprint functionality in Windows comes from iTunes.
I wonder if Apple will work it the same way now in OS X.
I guess it would make some sense to have compaibility with the iTunes versions.
 
My 10.6.5 setup still has Airprint.

To clarify:
I had the 10.6.5 beta with Airprint, and OS X would not install the 10.6.5 update from software update yesterday.

So I used the revisioner that came with the 10.6.5 beta, and the latest released update was now detected and installed. I rebooted, and Airprint is still there and functioning on my two Brother laser printers.

IMG_0003.PNG
 
Last edited:
imacken said:
As I'm sure you know, Airprint functionality in Windows comes from iTunes.
I wonder if Apple will work it the same way now in OS X.
I guess it would make some sense to have compaibility with the iTunes versions.
Click to expand...

It's doubtful since Bonjour is a part of Mac OS so there is no need to include it into iTunes.
 
rworne said:
My 10.6.5 setup still has Airprint.

To clarify:
I had the 10.6.5 beta with Airprint, and OS X would not install the 10.6.5 update from software update yesterday.

So I used the revisioner that came with the 10.6.5 beta, and the latest released update was now detected and installed. I rebooted, and Airprint is still there and functioning on my two Brother laser printers.
Click to expand...

Yes, apparaently if you update the beta it will work without replacing the 3 files because they remain untouched by the official 10.6.5 update.
If you do a straight update to 10.6.5 (from 10.6.4) it will not work without the files from the beta.
 
imacken said:
Yes, apparaently if you update the beta it will work without replacing the 3 files because they remain untouched by the official 10.6.5 update.
If you do a straight update to 10.6.5 (form 10.6.4) it will not work without the files from the beta.
Click to expand...

That's what I think too. The OP wanted to know what was up, so I posted one scenario where it was known to be working. Now that I found out how to solve the print permissions issue, it works great here. I did have issues up until and after the GM where I could not print to one printer due to permission issues.

The fix: delete the problem printer, reinstall the printer and recheck sharing.

If this issue was still there when 10.6.5 was ready to be released, I can see why they would pull it. But I am not privy to that kind of info.
 
bozzykid said:
Yes, I'm talking about Mac OS where bonjour is packaged with the OS.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I'm not with you. What does it matter whether Bonjour is packaged with the OS or installed separately either from iTunes or an update?
 
imacken said:
Sorry, I'm not with you. What does it matter whether Bonjour is packaged with the OS or installed separately either from iTunes or an update?
Click to expand...

Airprint on the Mac has already been working in previous betas. It doesn't use iTunes.
 
bozzykid said:
Airprint on the Mac has already been working in previous betas. It doesn't use iTunes.
Click to expand...
We know that, but it's been pulled in the release 10.6.5 hence the speculation. That's what the discussion is all about - what might happen.
Still don't see why it couldn't be implemented through iTunes as a possible explanation of why it was pulled, sorry.
I am struggling to see what other explanation there could be. Difficult to believe that it would be dumped.
 
Is it possible that the 10.6.6 update will bring the shared printing back to Mac OS X. It is only 3.7 mb I believe, so that sounds about the right size for something as trivial as printing.
 
MacRumorUser said:
Essentially AirPrint will work to newer AirPrint certified HP Wireless Printers.

They for some reason decided to remove AirPrint for 'shared' printers on Mac 10.6.5


You can add the functionality back into 10.6.5 with a simple hack
https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=11401113#post11401113



No-one can at this stage say if the Official Release of 4.2 will be different to the GM version and that you wont need this hack and all will be well - however it seems unlikely.
Click to expand...

I have a new HP ePrint printer and 4.2 GM installed on my iPad and can say with 100% confidence that it does not work. It will not see my printer even though every computer on my network can print to it. Any ideas?
 
sapporobaby said:
I have a new HP ePrint printer and 4.2 GM installed on my iPad and can say with 100% confidence that it does not work. It will not see my printer even though every computer on my network can print to it. Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Are you running Windows or OS X? What version of iTunes are you running?
 
applefanDrew said:
Is it possible that the 10.6.6 update will bring the shared printing back to Mac OS X. It is only 3.7 mb I believe, so that sounds about the right size for something as trivial as printing.
Click to expand...
It's all very odd this. I mean why 10.6.6 at 3.7Mb? Why release 10.6.5 at all? Why take out Airprint functionality when it seems to work well (for most people)? Will iTunes 10.1 be released with the Windows Airprint functionality removed? It would have to be wouldn't it? Mac users would be pretty annoyed if it wasn't.
Still, I am totally confused as to why it was dropped in the first place.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C134 Safari/6533.18.5)

imacken said:
bozzykid said:
Yes, I'm talking about Mac OS where bonjour is packaged with the OS.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I'm not with you. What does it matter whether Bonjour is packaged with the OS or installed separately either from iTunes or an update?
Click to expand...

AirPrint on windows is installed as a separate windows service by the iTunes installer, and the checkbox in iTunes is just used as a convenient way to enable and disable the service. In OSX it's installed as a CUPS filter so doesn't require a separate service. Therefore there is no requirement for a checkbox in iTunes or for anything to be included in iTunes.
Bear in mind also that this was done as part of the beta release cycle and might have been done that way in windows purely for convenience.
 
Phil A. said:
Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C134 Safari/6533.18.5)
AirPrint on windows is installed as a separate windows service by the iTunes installer, and the checkbox in iTunes is just used as a convenient way to enable and disable the service. In OSX it's installed as a CUPS filter so doesn't require a separate service. Therefore there is no requirement for a checkbox in iTunes or for anything to be included in iTunes.
Bear in mind also that this was done as part of the beta release cycle and might have been done that way in windows purely for convenience.
Click to expand...

I understand that Phil. My point was/is why does Airprint have to be installed as part of OS X? Is there something stopping it being installed as part of iTunes or a small independent software update or something else?
 
imacken said:
I understand that Phil. My point was/is why does Airprint have to be installed as part of OS X? Is there something stopping it being installed as part of iTunes or a small independent software update or something else?
Click to expand...

I guess there's nothing at all preventing it being installed as part of iTunes or even a separate software update. I suppose in some ways it makes sense to bundle it with iTunes as it's functionality that's required for iOS devices
 
Phil A. said:
I guess there's nothing at all preventing it being installed as part of iTunes or even a separate software update. I suppose in some ways it makes sense to bundle it with iTunes as it's functionality that's required for iOS devices
Click to expand...
Yes, and I would have thought that having more compatibility between the OS X and Windows versions would be a good thing. No?
Let's just hope that this is the reason why it was 'pulled' from 10.6.5, i.e. the functionality will return when 10.1 itunes is released.
 
imacken said:
Yes, and I would have thought that having more compatibility between the OS X and Windows versions would be a good thing. No?
Let's just hope that this is the reason why it was 'pulled' from 10.6.5, i.e. the functionality will return when 10.1 itunes is released.
Click to expand...

iTunes 10.1 on Windows 7 definitely removed the "Enable Airprint" checkbox in Preferences :-(.
 
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