Till now, HP has held a huge advantage over it’s printer rivals when it comes to printing from the iPad — because even though rivals have made strides with their own apps (like Epson’s slick iPrint app) HP’s printers remain the only ones with AirPrint, which is tied directly to iOS and allows printing from within apps, without having to use an intermediary app (eg iPrint).
Having the Maps app on the iPhone is a lifesaver for me. Not only does it help me navigate my way around places I don’t know, but it’ll also tell me how to get there when I leave the house.
However, trying to read directions from an iPhone while driving isn’t ideal, and it’s certainly not safe. Fortunately, iOS 5 allows you to print your directions from directly within the Maps app as long as you have a printer compatible with AirPrint. Here’s how!
So you’re a cutting edge, Post-PC consumer. You’ve bought into the Cloud, have all the latest apps on your iPad, and you work on the go. Just tweet this, email that, and print out an electronic boarding pass before you head to the airport.
Not so fast on that last step. There’s a tantalizing Print button in many iOS apps these days, but very few printers are usable without some extra work first. Unlike printing on the Mac or PC, AirPrint (the iOS-based printing system) is still not yet a fully realized solution. Fortunately, workarounds are available.
Last week’s great disappointment was the discovery that Apple had mostly pulled AirPrint support from OS X 10.6.5, which would allow you to print documents directly from iOS to almost any shared network printer. Native AirPrint support was trimmed only to a small number of AirPrint-compatible HP printers, and while hacks exist to get AirPrint support back via the command line, they’re a little beyond the capability of most users.
Enter FingerPrint, a new application from Collobos Software that enables AirPrint printing over Bonjour for many of the omitted printers. It accomplishes its neat trick by fooling Bonjour into broadcasting your normal printer in such a way that iOS 4.2 can see it.
Right now, if you have Mac OS X 10.6.5 and an iPad running iOS 4.2 GM, AirPrint’s a bit of a mess: some people are reporting that it is working, but many are not having any luck.
We suspected that it was just this sort of compatibility problems that caused Apple to scale AirPrint support back to AirPrint-compatible printers at the last minute, but developer Steven Troughton-Smith has some instructions on how to bring it to your Mac under OS X 10.6.5 and iOS 4.2 GM.
Along with AirPlay, AirPrint was a fiercely promoted new feature in iOS 4.2, promising a powerful new printing architecture that allows iOS devices to easily and wirelessly print to any networked printer.
Don’t be surprised, though, if AirPrint is nowhere to be seen when iOS 4.2 is released on Friday: according to a report on MacStories, Apple has pulled support for AirPrint from iOS 4.2 at the last minute.
Apple is making a big deal about the jazzed-up photo book capabilities in iLife ’11, and for good reason — being able to cradle a vibrant, printed image still trumps the digital alternative. But iPhoto isn’t the only way to transform pixels into ink.
Simply Postcards lets users grab any photo off their iPhone and snail-mail it to an address in the U.S. or elsewhere. Postcards ship the day after ordering them, and prices range from $1-$2 for a stateside address to double that for international cards.
The app is free, and so is the first postcard; the Cult is going to use its free credits to brighten the Microsoft HQ mailbox with images of our new MacBook Airs!
