One depressing omission from yesterday’s keynote was the long-requested addition of direct printing support for iOS devices. Jobs himself has said it’s coming, but apparently not this year, leaving your only option for printing a document on your iPad as emailing it to a computer with access to your printer.
If you don’t mind upgrading your printer, though, HP’s coming to the rescue with a line of new printers that will allow you — more or less — to print directly from your iDevice. Their line of new printers will cost between $99 and $400, and they come with a unique perk: each printer has its own, unique email address.
With HP’s new printers, all you need to do is email a document to your printer from your iPhone or iPad and have it automatically printed out. You can even share that email address with friends and family members.
There’s no word on exact models yet, but HP promises the first of their email-capable printers will be out next month, with small business models hitting in September.
Until Apple gets around to offering printer capability directly from your iOS, this seems like the best solution around… as long as you’re already in the market for some new printing hardware.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
