The convenience of being able to print directly from my iPad won me over. Images came out very high quality, and while printing via AirPrint using Printopia is slightly slower than printing directly from my Mac, it’s not a major difference. Regardless of the slight variation on what printed on a physical page, the quality of the printout was identical. In the picture above, I mention which printout is from AirPrint and which one is directly from my desktop.
#Better than printopia mac
I installed it on my Mac mini home server, and the Preference Pane popped up.Īs you can see, there was a little bit of difference in what printed on a physical page, but that could have been due to browser rendering differences in Chrome on my Mac versus what the iPad sent via AirPrint.
You must have your Mac running on the same network as the iOS devices you plan to use AirPrint with.
#Better than printopia download
Installing PrintopiaĮcamm Printopia is a small download that installs as a Preference Pane in your System preferences on your Mac. This sounded great in theory, and they had a seven-day trial, so I figured I would give it a try. In addition, you can also use AirPrint to send the printout directly to your Dropbox account, as well as your Mac. A short Google search turned up a reference to Ecamm Printopia, an application which allows any printer connected to your Mac to be available to your iOS devices via AirPrint. You see, my current color laser printer supports duplex printing, and I like being able to automatically print on both sides of the page. Out of the list of available printers, there were two color laser printers that met most of my needs, but not one. Looking at the list of supported AirPrint printers, several of the newer HP ePrint models work (both with AirPrint and Google Cloud Print, by the way). I don’t like how easily smudged inkjets printouts can get, and I like having a color printer that is networkable directly, via Ethernet or WiFi. You see, I like using color laser printers. Since I like to utilize the latest technology to make my life easier, what would I do? Should I go out and buy a new printer? Well, I decided to at least look at the list of printers, to see what was available. (Apple covers which iOS devices and printers are supported in their AirPrint 101 support article.)
A printer connected to the USB port of your Mac, PC, AirPort Base Station, or Time Capsule is not supported. Heck, even those of us with Apple Airport Extreme wireless routers that have attached printers could not use AirPrint:ĪirPrint only works with a network connection to an AirPrint-capable printer. But then I found out how limited the supported list of printers was. Indeed, Google’s Cloud Print functionality for their Chrome browsers works in a similar fashion. Being able to print from your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch (newer devices with iOS 4.2 or later) wirelessly sounded great. When Apple announced AirPrint for iOS devices, I could almost see Steve Jobs’ point about the “post-PC era”.
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