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AirPrint for iOS

by Ryan Petty on November 11, 2010
airprint

After downloading the OS X 10.6.5 update, I was disappointed to find that AirPrint support for iOS 4.2 devices is missing–at least for the printers on my home network.  From reports on sites such as AppleInsider, it appears that Apple has significantly changed AirPrint during the development process [Inside AirPrint: Apple's printing system for iOS].  According to a modified Apple press release, it appears only HP Printers with ePrint support will be supported initially [Apple AirPrint press release 9/15/2010].

Support for shared printers is not available in the initial release.  Mac OS X shared printers are not available to my iOS 4.2 devices.  According to AppleInsider,

Today’s public release of Mac OS X 10.6.5 does not appear to include support for AirPrint through Printer Sharing, meaning that while iOS devices will likely get AirPrint support in the upcoming iOS 4.2 update, they still won’t be able to print to shared printer queues set up on a Mac, which would appear to limit AirPrint to late-modeled printers specifically supporting HP’s ePrint feature.

After installing the public release of Mac OS X 10.6.5, AppleInsider could not get either an iPad or iPhone 4 running the GM developer build of iOS 4.2 to recognize a shared printer on the network. However, users with Windows 7 have reported being able to set up a printer share that is visible and usable by iPads running the GM developer build of iOS 4.2.

Apple may deliver an update that enables AirPrint-compatible Printer Sharing in Snow Leopard if the issue is simply a last minute technical issue and not being blocked by patent disputes. The company has pulled advertised features from Mac OS X in the past without explanation, only to add them back at a later time. One example of this was wireless Time Machine backups to Time Capsule. At the same time, Apple has also abandoned advertised efforts over patent issues after investing significant resources, such as it recently did with ZFS support.

Macstories.com had this take,

Update: Unlike many other blogs that linked to this post claim, the rumor isn’t about AirPrint being cancelled. It’s about AirPrint through shared printers on Macs and PCs.

When Apple released the first beta of iOS 4.2 for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, they also officially announced AirPrint, the wireless printing system that would work with specific HP printers and shared printers on Macs and PCs:

“AirPrint is Apple’s powerful new printing architecture that matches the simplicity of iOS—no set up, no configuration, no printer drivers and no software to download,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users can simply tap to print their documents or photos wirelessly to an HP ePrint printer or to a printer shared on a Mac or PC.”

No official word from Apple, but Steve Jobs allegedly weighed in on the controversy

From: Steve Jobs [mailto:sjobs@apple.com]
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2010 11:47 AM
To: --------
Subject: Re: Is Apple Promoting Vaporware

AirPrint has not been pulled. Don't believe everything
you read. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 10, 2010, at 5:07 AM, ------------------------> wrote:
Good Morning, Mr. Jobs:

As a release-day purchaser of an iPad, I was elated when you
revealed iOS 4.2 would support AirPrint. Now comes reports
AirPrint support has been pulled from 4.2. Between
announcements/assurances of the white iPhone, and now the
pulling of AirPrint, is Apple going to lose credibility and
become known for announcing “vaporware”?

Respectfully,

[UPDATE #1] 9to5 Mac had the following to say:

After talking to several users of iOS 4.2 GM and Mac OS X 10.6.5 (public release) it appears that AirPrint functionality does not work. The printing option is definitely still present on the iOS software but it doesn’t actually print what you are telling it to print. On the other hand, it appears that AirPrint is working for users with the iOS 4.2 GM whom have upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6.5 final from one of the betas.

Flickr user TalkaboutDesign has uploaded pictures to his account detailing that AirPrint is in fact working for him with Mac OS X 10.6.5. Because of this, we figure he upgraded from a beta and iOS 4.2 final will be required for AirPrint to actually work. After all, Steve Jobs said that AirPrint wasn’t removed from iOS 4.2 and he would not lie, right?

We’ve heard multiple reports from users that the golden master seed of iOS 4.2 still had a few bugs and because of this, we believe Apple has been fixing up iOS 4.2 the last couple days and has changed some algorithms related to AirPrint. So, hopefully Friday we’ll know the full story as to if AirPrint will work with iOS 4.2′s public release or not.

[UPDATE #2] According to the folks at HardMac, it’s possible to re-enable that option by installing manually the files that were in the last beta.  I’ve followed the steps below and can confirm that printing works.

  • Download the files here: http://cl.ly/99eaa26e6a7273db9ca0
  • You will have to install them in an invisible folder called ‘usr’. you can make it appear by typing the following line in the Terminal:open -a Finder /usr/
  • Copy the content of the folder ‘mime’ into ‘share/cups/mime/’ and ‘urftopdf’ into ‘libexec/cups/filter/’this is where files should go:/usr/libexec/cups/filter/urftopdf/usr/share/cups/mime/apple.convs/usr/share/cups/mime/apple.types
  • Remove your printer from the printing preferences
  • Reboot
  • add your printer again and activate printer sharing.
  • If everything went well, you’ll be able to print from an iOS 4.2 iDevice. Of course, there is certainly a reason why Apple didn’t enable the option, and there could be some bug. If you choose to enable Airprint, we advise you to do a backup of your system in order to be able to go back in case of a problem.

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From: Apple