Patent Applications Hint Apple Wants To Eliminate Printer Drivers

An anonymous reader writes "Apple has filed two patent applications that describe an approach as well as file formats and APIs to eliminate the printer driver as a requirement for users to access a printer and print documents. If the company has its way, there will be three ways to access a printer in the future: The first will be via a conventional software driver. The second will be via a cloud service and the third will be via a driverless access method that supports 'universal' printing from any type device."

Comments

Re:postscript

[MBCook]

And it did a great job. Aren't the patents on PostScript expired by now? And the microprocessor and memory needed to run it is now dirt cheap.

Years ago getting printers to work on Linux was a major pain, and often the output didn't look that great. But if you had a postscript printer, it was a 3 second setup. Quite a bit like configuring a real SoundBlaster for Linux compared to some no-name 3rd party piece of junk.

Re:postscript

[jmorris42]

> my phone can see the printer via wifi and it detects make/model and sends a request to the internet,
> where my print job is magically turned into something recognized by the printer.

Someday.... Meanwhile today a Linux or Mac with CUPS works. Some printers even support it native. Imagine today you wander into a WiFi net with a CUPS server and you just see printers magically appear in your list. You get a PPD delivered automagically so you see all of its features, color, duplex, paper trays and finishing options, everything. It is beautiful.

Sounds like we just need to get CUPS into the iCrap, Windows (think it can do IPP but it isn't installed normally) and most important a direct implementation hosted on the cheap WiFi capable printers.