Un-Cripple Apple's AirPrint with Printopia for Mac
On Monday, Apple rolled out their latest software update for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. iOS 4.2 brings a handful of new and useful features to the big A's mobile line-up, including over-the-air printing. AirPrint makes it easy to print e-mails, photos, web pages and documents straight from iOS to your WiFi-enabled printer. Although the functionality has been a long time coming, many feel the final software is crippled by it's limited compatibility with existing wireless printers. In fact, to date there are only 11 products on the market which work with AirPrint, all of which are from HP
So if you, like us, are perfectly happy with your current print-out setup, you might want to check out Printopia for the Mac, a superbly simple $10 application that restores some function to Apple's crippled AirPrint update. Read on for our video demo, verdict and download links...
As you can see, getting Printopia up and working is really just a case of download, install and go, just make sure you've got iOS 4.2 installed on your phone, pod or pad first, or no cigar! Although in this video we've got our Canon Pixma wired straight into our rendezvous computer, Ecamm assure that Printopia will find any networked printer that your Mac can see. Of course this means that you need to have your computer at least powered on to use AirPrint, but we reckon it's a small price to pay compared to dropping 200 squids on a HP Envy.
Printopia is free to try for seven days, then $9.95 if you want to keep it. The question is, are Apple going to open up printing to all manufacturers in their next software update, and are they likely to ship it soon? Who knows, but 'till then, we're gunna stick with this software gem.
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Matt Fryy
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