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0 pointsscarface749y ago0 comments

The software side of printers have gotten worse. Back in the day, when all high end printers support PostScript, you didn't have to worry about drivers. Now, especially with Windows, your printer can become obsolete with the next OS upgrade.

At least on the Mac/iOS side, most consumer printers support AirPrint and you don't need drivers to support basic operations. I have a perfectly functional (cheap) color laser printer that doesn't work pass Windows 7. But works fine with my iOS devices thanks to AirPrint. It also supports Google's Cloud Print so I guess that's one way I could make it work with Windows 10 if I were so inclined.

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sjwright9y ago· 2 in thread

AirPrint is, when compared to what came before it, mind-numbingly simple. Printer announces itself with Bonjour, provides basic configuration (like choice of paper tray) with IPP, then accepts documents in PDF format. The end.

Put simply, it upends the retarded mess of printer drivers and replaces it with something that does the job perfectly well 99 percent of the time. All it requires is for the printer to have sufficient MIPS to raster PDF files.

tonyedgecombe9y ago

Isn't it a subset of PDF? I thought the rasterisation happens on the host.

scarface74OP9y ago

It does happen on the host (I think). That reminds me of another advantage of hosting a network printer on the Mac. Even if the printer does require a dedicated print driver, to the rest of the network - including Windows computers -it's seen as a generic PostScript printer and the Mac takes care of the translation.

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