Unbelievable Apple iPad

paulj · Guru Joined: 30 Sep 2004 Posts: 358 Location: Wales, UK

<Rant Mode>

My wife is the proud owner of a new iPad with Retina display (costing 2x my i5 laptop!!!

), and I have had the "pleasure" of setting it up. Anyway, I have now got to the bit where I tell it where my network printer lives so it can print documents. Except, it can't print documents to my network printer, as it isn't an "airPrint" compatible printer. So, whereas there are fully functional protocols for discovering and using printers over wifi networks, Apple have decided not to use them, but instead to invent their own. So no problem - "there's an app for that". No kidding! I have to pay for an app to enable printing from this device?!! Worse still, the ratings on most of the apps are not that good, and on the better ones I have downloaded, the printing capability doesn't seamlessly integrated with the system applications, but requires you to copy content to the clipboard, then switch to the printing app to print it out.

That, in my opinion, is unacceptable, and is why I have used Linux for the last 17 years and will continue to do so into the future.

</Rant Mode>

If anyone here has similar experiences, and can point me in the direction of seamlessly integrating a non-airPrint printer , I would be most grateful!

paulj · Guru Joined: 30 Sep 2004 Posts: 358 Location: Wales, UK

Another observation - the understanding of this issue and the potential solutions by many users is interesting. For example: http://ipadhelp.com/ipad-help/airprint-using-any-printer-on-a-mac/

I can't believe that people are happy once they are given an application to run on their iMac which makes a printer attached to it to present as an airPrint printer. Roughly paraphrased: "Thanks for the amazing wonderful app that allows me to print on my printer while only needing an iMac powered up and running to manage printouts from my iPad - truly amazing..!"

I suppose at least the iPad part of the link is then working correctly :roll:

notageek · Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2013 5:02 pm Post subject:

Printing email kills trees.

I thought preserving the earth and its beings were number one priority for hipsters.
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paulj · Guru Joined: 30 Sep 2004 Posts: 358 Location: Wales, UK

How very true! I am not sure that making everyone who does want to print throw away their printer and buy a new one is a positive move in preserving the earth though!!

notageek · Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2013 5:15 pm Post subject:

So don't print then.

This man didn't : http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-01-03/canada-ipad-passport-crossing/52367734/1
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jonnevers · Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2013 2:03 am Post subject:

Clad in Sky · l33t Joined: 04 May 2007 Posts: 816 Location: Germany

Well, just do it the old-fashioned way and plug the USB printer cable into the iPad. Oh, wait...

So, then, tell your wife to send whatever she wants printed via email to you and you can print it for her from a real computer.

And now, just think for a moment, what kind of effort would be necessary for a simple task like printing if Apple products weren't so customer friendly...
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_______0 · Guru Joined: 15 Oct 2012 Posts: 521

the solution is rather straigh forward, no third party apps needed, extra cords, etc:

greyspoke · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 08 Jan 2010 Posts: 137

Well it looks like you can configure one of those little wireless print servers to work with Apples:

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060404021600193

So it looks like you don't need a whole grown up computer attached to the non-airport printer to print to it.

I had one of those Linksys WPS54G print servers once, tiny thing but worked great (we didn't have any Apples in the house then).

paulj · Guru Joined: 30 Sep 2004 Posts: 358 Location: Wales, UK

I have now configured cups on my pc to share the printer, and expose the printer with Avahi. Details can be found here: http://www.productionmonkeys.net/guides/print-server/airprint. Brother also make a app available which works without the computer running, printing documents from the clipboard.

I am now toying with the idea of running a Raspberry Pi or a BeagleBoard as a printer server, and also as a DHCP server and to provide a ipv6 DNS service. Unnecessary of course, but fun to experiment!