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Comment by zaveri | Hacker News Reader

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zaveri·

Appears that AirPrint will only work directly with HP ePrint printers. Kind of disappointed...

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Not quite, you should read the press release[1] more closely (emphasis mine):

HP’s existing and upcoming ePrint enabled printers will be the first to support printing direct from iOS devices.

Also, if you have access to the iOS dev program, read the release notes for 4.2.

1. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/09/15airprint.html

Where do you get the 'only' from? I'm sure it is all standards based and that Apple wants all printer manufacturers to support this.

Also, it works with Printer Sharing on your Mac. Which will be the gateway to whatever printer you already have.

Why not just use the standard print queues instead of inventing your own print queue standard and calling that standard?

So they don't have to pack 6gb (or whatever ridiculous size it is on OSX) of printer drivers in iOS?

For one: Linux packs them quite small and somehow Ubuntu fits everything in it's 700MB ISO. Second, you could have the more obscure drivers download over the air, or as a package from the app store.

Even if they can minimize their size, it's one of those things that has persisted in its present state for too long. Why isn't there a standard for (at least consumer-level) printer communication? I think this is just another case of mobile device constraints necessitating overdue reform.

If that's what you want, you could have the best of both worlds if printers ran CUPS. Then you could have backwards and forwards compatibility.

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