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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."
Wasn't postscript supposed to solve these problems 20 years ago?
So long as they sit on the patent and allow for a free-for-all licensing, this could prove to be wonderful. I never understood the need for 50 million printer drivers when the printer is now a computer-on-a-chip.
Sig: I stole this sig.
As we're all aware, one of the problems with the patent system is that patents don't always equal products. How many times has an Apple patent made the news with no product to show for it? How many people missed the iPhone because they weren't paying attention to the right patents?
That being said, this is WAY more plausible given Apple's work with CUPS and AirPrint.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
So... Option 1: Use a conventional driver.
Option 2: Send it to the cloud, which just basically uses someone else's driver.
Option 3: Standardize all printers to communicate in exactly the same way, making a "one-size-fits-all" driver.
I don't really see the "elimination" part here. Maybe a "simplification" at best.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
So, Apple's setting out to solve the print driver problem right when they're making tablets so popular that we don't need hard copy anymore.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
http://xkcd.com/927/
Nearly all consumers want CHEAP printers. That means that the translation from text/image to printer imaging codes is done in the computer, not the printer, which saves CPU power and memory in the printer. Look at the difference in price between the typical Windows printer and the Postscript ('specially color) printers. A Windows printer only has to buffer a few raster lines, using the processing power and memory of the host computer, while the Postscript printer has to buffer the entire page, since there could be a command at the end of the page that places something at the top.
Add to this the insanity of any/all software and process patents and it is absolutely in the printer manufacturers' interest to tie the raster-defining codes into obscure and NDA-protected proprietary drivers to avoid tripping over some patent that says " a one bit in this field says put a green dot next on the page".
* With iOS
Printing via REST. Shazam!
Printer drivers are necessary in many cases because non-Apple printer vendors support a very wide and differing feature set.
You are aware that the sets "non-Apple printer vendors", at least in the sense of "printer vendors other than Apple", and "printer vendors" are the same? I.e., there are no Apple printers.
I don't know why the OS can't have a Printer superclass that apps all call with a single unified print API, but that the specific instance of attached printer overrides with a subclass implementing the same interface but in that printer's own ways. Printers are all USB, and can install their subclass when plugging in.
Sure, that's a lot like a driver, but the users and programmers never notice anything but calling members of the Printer object. So the reasons for eliminating "drivers" are satisfied by doing it this way.
--
make install -not war
Then why do Macs work that way, too? They're not Windows, and they weren't Intel until recently - and didn't have to do Intel the way MS does.
--
make install -not war
I have mod points, but I won't spend them, because I can't mod you both +1 insightful and -1 flamebait.
And if I could do so, the net mod would be +0:Ambivalent.
You have some great points, truly, but it's completely neutered by the Apple hater verbiage at the end. Leave the "social rejects" out of it, and it's a cogent and insightful post.
it was a closed source printer driver that made Richard Stallman invent the GNU/FOSS software movement, if not for his nemesis GNU would never have been born...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
This is what I thought of when I read the summary: http://www.collegehumor.com/video/3915385/your-printer-is-a-brat
yup, Apple is starting to do those dirty tricks only that evil company from Redmond Washington does:
1.Embrace
2.Extend
3.Extinguish
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
so like a standard Printer Control Language or maybe some sort of Script for Posting thins to a printer... I wish someone would have thought of that sooner.
No, nothing like that. As noted in this comment, there are a lot of cheap non-PostScript printers out there; in the scheme described in the patent, a printer could say "hey, I do PostScript" and the print system could send PostScript to the printer, just as it could say "hey, I do JPEG" and, if what's being printed is a JPEG image, the print system could send the JPEG to the printer, or it could say "hey, I do PDF" and the print system could send a PDF to the printer, or it could say "hey, I only do raster images" and the print system could generate raster images and send them to the printer.
I don't want a cheap printer, I want a printer that is cheap to operate. The cheaper the printer, the more the ink cartridges (or whatever) will cost you, the sooner it will break or be abandoned etc. I bought an Laserprinter years ago that would print something like 6000 pgs per laser cartridge. The carts cost $120 or so and the printer cost me $300 plus, but it was far cheaper than replacing the ink carts in a cheap printer continuously at $45-75 each (as with the current printer we have). The only reason I got rid of the old printer was that we bought a newer one that was colour. I would rather have the old one now mind you.
Buying cheap printers and then spending more in the long run is for idiots.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
there are no Apple printers.
Tomorrow when I get home, please remind me to check whether my ImageWriter II (impact printer used with my Apple IIGS) and my Color StyleWriter 2500 (a rebadged Canon BubbleJet) are still in my basement, or whether they've evaporated. (References here)
Serious mode: Apple printers still exist; they're just discontinued.
It's Patent Application 20110194140 ; here's the application.
And, yes, that's Michael "Mr. CUPS" Sweet in the Inventors list.
I live in the second largest city in Australia. I work in a building which houses several engineering firms and the state police. Tablets are everywhere. Go out for coffee and there will be a tablet on every fourth table or so. Though I think it is a bit of a fad. I think tablets will take a stable chunk of the light laptop use case in the long term.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
apple will want to ask "30% of the revenue we generate for the printer - we think' that's fair"
Given that they already open sourced CUPS, and don't have any profit in printers, it's more likely than not they would simply open source it like OpenCL, CUPS, Webkit, etc.
Apple developed OpenCL and open-sourced it under the permissive GPL. Kudos for that.
However, CUPS existed and was open-source for years before Apple adopted it in 2002 (they did not create it).
Webkit is a fork of the KHTML library which is and was under the LGPL, and thus Apple had no choice over open-sourcing it and releasing it under a permissive license.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
and ink at 50%-200%+ mark up
Serious mode: Apple printers still exist; they're just discontinued.
Yes, I know about the LaserWriter, etc., so "there are no Apple printers any more", then. The point is that you can't rationally argue that Apple can solve this problem because the printers they design have limited capabilities, and thus need no drivers, as they haven't designed printers in ages (and the first one they designed was a PostScript printer, so you could send it arbitrary programs - hardly "very locked-down and limited to a small set of functionality".
There's no way I can ever conceive of lugging a tablet around with me just going about everyday tasks
Let me guess: man who wouldn't be caught dead with "a purse". I have a bag for my netbook.
for really important documents I want a paper backup that I can still access in case of a power outage.
How long do you expect such outages to last?
With an electronic copy, we need some kind of digital device to accommodate the transfer
Such device could be a mobile phone. I'm under the impression that it has become customary to carry a mobile phone in case of needing to make an urgent call, such as car/bike trouble or notifying someone of one's impending arrival at the locked front door of a multiple-story apartment. The one wrinkle could be that one of the parties is a cheapskate like myself who carries a dumbphone because smartphone service is ten times as expensive as dumbphone service.
and we have to make sure the document is in some format that both of our devices understand
Apple iOS ships with a PDF reader, and several PDF readers are available for Android.
There is nothing novel or nontrivial about printing without a printer driver, and this has been done more than 25 years ago. We can expect this patent application to be approved straightaway.
Apple really wants to move the printer driver from the computer to the printer...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
So, rather than have a "driver" the computer has to know a new means of interrogating the capabilities of the printer, and then convert files to a format that the printer can handle... Right?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I say eff the cloud and everything about it. To me, it represents nothing more than a way to extract fees from you every month.
Just Imagine for a moment that you run a large computer company that produces several different types of devices, some of these devices are static, like say a few different desktop devices, and (I know there are arguments about the validity of this claim) a server or 2, and several of differing styles of mobile devices. All of which can be used for accessing, moving, and even creating or altering data in one form or another. Sooner or later, your customers, due to the fact that they have to deal with non - customers and even due to the fact that they are human and thus not enlightened enough to be able to totally live without printing, will need to print some of this data (photos, emails, maps whatever).
And what is more they may even want to print data in different places with different printers,their home, their office, their girlfriends house, great-aunt Maudes nursing home, their mothers house (and god forbid but one of these may be one of the unenlightened who does not own one of your companies products).
Now there is a problem.
All of these different printers have different drivers and some of them, will not be worth the hassle of installing the driver, with all of its extra functionality, just to print a picture of little billy falling off the swing.
So you think about a universal driver, basic, able to be used by any device even (grudgingly) your oppositions devices (if they pay a suitable licensing fee, instant extra source of revenue, that will keep the accounting department happy).
But a true universal driver is not practical because every printer has different functions and capabilities and really, all most people want to do is access the most basic of these,e.g. Print text and Print pictures, good quality or "I don't care" quality, without having to load drivers for every printer everywhere.
The person in charge of each of these printers still needs or wants access to these higher functions, and for their home printer (and maybe their office one too) accessed from their desktop or your laptop, but they won't necessarily want all of that functionality from their phone, tablet, or ultralight netbook.
So lets look at what you can sell to your customers
1. Full function printing from a desktop/laptop or other device, needs full printer driver
2. Some way of linking your portable device to your desktop/laptop or whatever to get a remote link to the full printer driver, lets call it "via the cloud", thats vague enough for a patent filing
3. Some way of universally accessing any printer from any device, like say a basic universal printer driver, yes we know its been done before, but we might be able to rephrase it well enough to get it past the United States Patent Trolls Office.
or as the summary put it
"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."
When you think of it in basic functionality like this, it is really very obvious and self evident, so now, there are only a couple more steps
step one. Patent the concept
step two. Licence the patent (very cheap or even free to the printer companies, so that it becomes ubiquitous)
step three. Increase sales because of universal printer access - profit
set four. Wait until it becomes so commonplace and the competition start to use this function, or want to use it
step five. ????
step six. PROFIT !!!!!
da da da dum indeed.
At home, I've got an Epson laser printer sitting on the network. At work, I've got a few different HPs and a Dell on the network. At school, there are quite a few different models.
I can't recall the last time, if ever, that I used a USB printer.
While a standardization of features could make ti so you don't need a 3rd part driver for simple things, you still need a driver and you need a more complex one for full support.
If you want to see an area where this has happened, look at audio on Windows. Microsoft laid out the specs for the Universal Audio Architecture. As the name implies, it is a set of audio standards. For Vista and later, to get the logo you need to have a sound card that complies with it to the extent that it can function with no drivers outside of the base UAA driver that comes with Windows.
Works too, those Realtek HD chips that are so popular on motherboards just work as UAA devices right after install. These days, a good bit of after market cards do as well.
However, for all that, Realtek still has drivers on their site. Why? Because the default UAA supports only a basic set of features. If you want support for everything, you have to get their driver.
So it works and all that, and I'm not saying it is a bad idea to have standards such that you don't need additional drivers for basic support. But geeks at least do need to understand that there is still a driver, it is just one included with the OS, and that it is just basic support, you'll need custom stuff to fully support all features.
So they're going to eliminate printer drivers by using printer drivers? Excellent summary!
So if you're going to have to connect to the internet and send all of your data away, to have it reformatted and sent back, every time you want to print something then why not just connect to a printer driver website and and download a driver once, never to have this problem again? This doesn't seem to help any situation except that everything you print goes into the hands of a corporation briefly.
there are a lot of cheap non-PostScript printers out there
So, the printer manufacturer's choice is:
1. License PostScript from Adobe.
2. License this new protocol from Apple.
Either way, the result won't be 'cheap' anymore.
Have gnu, will travel.
Could it be that filing patent applications relating to printers by a company that used to make printers could be a hint, that maybe, just maybe, they intend to start making printers again?
I hate printers.
No idea where you are, but I've seen them all over the place in San Francisco, Chicago, New York and San Diego.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
So, rather than have a "driver" the computer has to know a new means of interrogating the capabilities of the printer
Or an existing means of interrogating the capabilities of the printer (which they call out by name in the patent application).
and then convert files to a format that the printer can handle... Right?
Yup, or ask some server "in the cloud" to do it, as the patent application says.
So, the printer manufacturer's choice is:
1. License PostScript from Adobe.
2. License this new protocol from Apple.
So where in the patent application do they mention a new protocol? They do mention an existing protocol....
Makes sense since a lot of desktop publishing is done in Macs. But the focus of this patents make me think it's something more focused on con(pro)sumers.
iPrinter - If you try to fill the cartridges/tonner by yourself they'll get your ass in a re-education camp.. because they're built in! yay innovation!
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."
Lets look at that quote.
3 ways to access the printer in the future.
1st way is a "software driver" which oddly enough, is what we call a Printer Driver.
Doesn't seem to me they are trying to get rid of it.
ya, ya, i know #2 is the "iCloud" which would have printer drivers on the computers connected to the "cloud", and #3 is the meat of the article, basicly printers built with a universal "api" inside, instead of having to have special drivers on the computer. ya, that would be nice, but I don't see it really happening.
I just like how the summary and crap makes it seem like they are doing away with the printer drivers when it's listed as a way to access the printers in the future. Ya, i'd post that as anonymous also.
Be seeing you...
All I can say is that I know about 20 people with tables, mostly through work and the iPad 2 that my wife has. Most go unused most of the time. My wife much prefers her 5-lb Dell Latitude to the iPad because it's not as fun to use Facebook if you can't type... I'd like those $800 back :P
Chance favors the prepared mind.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
How does one notify the patent office of prior art? This is exactly how our print service works with our application: we create a print job from any device that supports one of three standard print formats: PDF, PS and text. The print job is given to a central repository with the only requirement that it be accessible over a network or internet connection. The system also allows the use of a local printer, if it supports the format. It's been in documented and provable use since 2003.
I use my iPad2 for roughly 2 hours per day Monday through Friday on my bus commute. It is far more comfortable to use for reading and browsing than a laptop. Other than that I use it when I fly. Again, much more comfortable to use than the 15" laptop that I used in the past. It is also great during boring meetings that i am forced to attend once a week. I know a lot of clueless morons claim that netbooks are so superior but I have never seen anyone hold up a netbook to their face or even keep it on their lap to read an ebook for an hour on the bus. Hmm, I wonder why that is? Could it be that it is incredibly uncomfortable and awkward? I do see students use a laptop very briefly on the bus maybe once or twice a year. But, I have seen other people use a Kindle or an iPad for extended periods of time. I also use my iPad occasionally with Skype to communicate with friends or coworkers while I am on the bus. I have used an iPod Touch before to read but it just doesn't compare because of the tiny screen. Also browsing is an even better experience on my iPad than on my laptop. And it will only get better. The improvements that I am looking for are, a higher resolution screen, a lighter device, more battery life even though it is not really an issue for me, it just would be nice, and lots more storage because I love to fill the thing up with movies when I travel and more choice is always good and I just love to keep some shows like Cowboy Bebop and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya permanently. I should add that I commute to and from a major US university where I work as a software developer. I am the stereotypical UNIX nerd: I am overweight, dress poorly, have long grey hair and generally couldn't give a rat's ass as to what others think about me. The operating systems I currently use are Linux, Mac OS/iOS and Solaris. I hate Windows!
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
And how long are we going to use printers?. I have one at home, I never use it anymore. Seems like they should have invented this 10 years ago.
Apple has sold the odd million of them.
In my lab there are half a dozen, and they do very much replace paper. Reams of it. Filing cabinets full.
It's easy enough to get updated drivers for everything else, if you have network access, but a number of times I've had a fresh OS install without a properly autodetected ethernet card. I'd like them to have some basic level of functionality with a truly generic driver.
yup, Apple is starting to do those dirty tricks only that evil company from Redmond Washington does:
1.Embrace
2.Extend
3.Extinguish
For example? For your statement to be relevant, there'd need to be at least a few, but I doubt you can even come up with one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Printing_Protocol
You mean the Internet Printing Protocol to which both the first patent application and the second application refer?
CUPS is based on it...
You mean the CUPS that the first inventor in the inventor lists for both applications wrote?
Could it be that filing patent applications relating to printers by a company that used to make printers could be a hint, that maybe, just maybe, they intend to start making printers again?
I rather doubt that it is. It's a patent application relating to printers by a company that makes machines that are, sadly, sometimes forced to send data to printers. The fact that, at one point, they made printers (or, at least, sold printers on which they did some design work), and then thought better of it, is probably particularly relevant here.
Or they just want this in their back-pocket, and have no plans of implementing it in the foreseeable future.
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
For some of them, probably nothing, for others, additional controls. If you'd care or not is a different matter, but the Realtek HD chips have various controls you can only get at via their drivers, like delay correction for speaker position, microphone echo cancellation, and special effects.
For other cards it can be things like a more advanced mixer, or ASIO drivers, or things like that.
If your card does what you want, it isn't a big deal just to use the UAA drivers, that was the point of the UAA standard after all. However it is also not a big deal to install the drivers, they are provided free of charge by any manufacturer I am aware of.
There's a few printers even at the low end of network printers that will work if you send a PDF down the wire. Some (like the one I've had for 5 years) will even work if you send it by FTP.
So where in the patent application do they mention a new protocol? They do mention an existing protocol....
In the other patent application they mention "a new document-format-preferred key (as a MIME media type), which enables the printer to specify a "preferred" document format out of all of the document formats that are supported by the printer", which is a new IPP key, and also mention "a new "URF-supported key" to a discovery protocol and a transport protocol. More specifically, some embodiments have added a new URF-supported key to the discovery protocol as part of a Bonjour(TM) TXT record, and have also added an analogous URF-supported key to the transport protocol as a new printer description attribute for the IPP protocol", where URF is presumably the Universal Raster Format mentioned in other comments. It also mentions "a new device-independent bitmap container for printer data".
If the patent is granted, I suspect licensing it to put into your printer will be easy and cheap, to encourage lots of printers to support it, but licensing it to put into, for example, your smartphone OS might not be quite so easy or cheap.
I'm not quite sure where the "BSD licensed CUPS" myth started... The very early beta releases (back in 1999) of CUPS were under the Aladdin Free Public License (you can read about Michael Sweet talking about the AFPL license choice in a comment) , a licence that is more similar to the GPL than to a BSD-esque licence. However, in version 1.0b3, CUPS switched from the AFPL to the GPL and has been distributed under the GPL ever since (and you can read Michael Sweet saying the CUPS API is under the GPL but perhaps this changed later?).
This does not refute your point that Apple did _not_ fork the project closed after they obtained the copyright (CUPS always required copyright assignment so it was always possible for people to negotiate for it to be provided under terms other than the GPL).
Drivers are more than just translating printer data into print outs. They have control panels for features in the printer. Multiple trays and the like.
Getting rid of printer drivers would mean having to handle these device specific features and even if you added facilities to handle these unique features there may be a situation that can't be handled.
So all we've done is move the driver from the computer to the printer or an intermediary point - so you can still have problems with a driver, it'll just be more out of your own control to update them/correct them when you get a new OS...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!