iOS AirPrint & 10.6.5 (shared printers)

fryke

Moderator
Staff member
Mod
Although Steve Jobs apparently emailed back a person questioning whether AirPrint was cancelled and said he shouldn't believe everything on the internet, apparently Mac OS X 10.6.5 was released without support for AirPrint via shared printers. The feature officially only works with new printers that support AirPrint out of the box, i.e. those new "e" HP printers.

That, of course, is not what was advertised when iOS 4.2 was presented earlier this year, and the support for shared printers _was_ in 10.6.5 beta builds. Some people have "adjusted" the CUPS printing system with the files necessary from the beta builds. And you can, too: http://netputing.com/2010/11/11/airprint-hacktivator/ ...

It reminds me of the time when Apple removed the "minimize in place" feature of the Dock in Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2), and people installed the Dock.app from the last beta build to feature the feature.

Hopefully, Apple will get around to finish the feature for 10.6.6, but for the time being, there's at least a solution. I think the flip-flopping on this particular issue is a tad unnerving, because while I _do_ like to have the feature available (because I had beta builds of 10.6.5 installed, I didn't even have to "hack" the system, the feature simply stayed in place), I don't think it's that important. I've never encountered a bug with it, and I believe the _only_ reason I could come up with for Apple to remove it was to urge printer makers to make their newer printers compatible. Apple maybe thinks the press will applaud HP for integrating the feature while Brother, Canon etc. do not. I don't personally think this is going to pay off for Apple, though. Rather, I think it's going to get Apple bad press instead.

Either way: Here you go (well, through the link I posted above...). Happy iOS printing.

1.) Download the tool.
2.) "Hacktivate".
3.) Remove the printer you want shared for iOS printing completely.
4.) Re-add that printer and setup printer sharing for it.
5.) Print from iOS! :)
6.) The whole thing's reversible through the tool if you want to revert your system to the original 10.6.5 setup. That won't work if you did it by hand or by going through installing a beta build before the official 10.6.5 release, though, because the tool can only create a backup of the original state if there actually ever _was_ the original state. ;)
 
Last edited:
Back
Top