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Patent Applications Hint Apple Wants To Eliminate Printer Drivers

Posted by timothy on from the from-anywhere-is-a-nice-ideal dept.

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."

9 of 323 comments (clear)

  1. postscript by PineGreen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wasn't postscript supposed to solve these problems 20 years ago?

    1. Re:postscript by MBCook · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

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    2. Re:postscript by icebike · · Score: 4, Informative

      Well patents expiring helped a lot.

      But in reality, virtually every postscript printer came with a PPD, and that PPD was all you ever needed to get a postscript printer running on linux. A PPD file is non OS specific.

      But given Apple's overly litigagatory stance on any thing they (claim to) develop, I just don't see any of their suggestions getting accepted.
      I can't see anyone opening themselves up for that kind of lawsuit until or unless Apple puts it all under the GPL or some other free license.

      Postscript is free and everybody uses it. It pretty much renders page preparation a non issue, because virtually all postscript printers will use the default PPD in a pinch, albeit with somewhat more limited capabilities. Printers do have different capabilities and you must make allowance for that, but postscript handled that very nicely.

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    3. Re:postscript by CAIMLAS · · Score: 5, Informative

      Wrong. Apple did no such thing. CUPS has been around as open source since 1997 - the GPL, to be precise:

      Michael Sweet, who owns Easy Software Products, started developing CUPS in 1997. The first public betas appeared in 1999.[3] The original design of CUPS used the LPD protocol, but due to limitations in LPD and vendor incompatibilities, the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) was chosen instead. CUPS was quickly adopted as the default printing system for several Linux distributions, including Red Hat Linux.[citation needed] In March 2002, Apple Inc. adopted CUPS as the printing system for Mac OS X 10.2.[4] In February 2007, Apple Inc. hired chief developer Michael Sweet and purchased the CUPS source code.[5]

      And you seem to be implying that Apple open sourced Webkit, etc. (BSD? anything else you'd like to make wild claims about?) as well? Bull fucking shit. Webkit originated in KDE (more or less, it may have heritage beyond that). OpenCL is indeed Apple, but it's not open source, either.

      Did Apple make Samba, Apache, and Postscript, too? (The answer is no.) Apple is no "proponent" of "open source"; they're a proponent of free software. There is a huge, huge difference, particularly when they are the sole financial benefactor involved.

      I'm so sick and tired of Apple fanboys saying "it was done on the mac, first!" when the reality is often quite different. Apple gets credit for improving upon CUPS, sure. But not much beyond that (and even that is tenuous to argue).

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  2. never gonna happen by dltaylor · · Score: 4, Informative

    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".

    1. Re:never gonna happen by RoFLKOPTr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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".

      You have a good point 10 years ago. Today, processors and memory are so cheap that you could build an entire computer into a printer and still sell it for $150. See also: netbooks, handheld gaming devices, mobile phones.

  3. Re:mmmm by icebike · · Score: 4, Informative

    This might be one of those patents that a company like Apple files for defense purposes especially with their CUPS and Bonjour work

    THEIR CUPS?

    Michael Sweet, who owns Easy Software Products, started developing CUPS in 1997. The first public betas appeared in 1999. The original design of CUPS used the LPD protocol, but due to limitations in LPD and vendor incompatibilities, the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) was chosen instead. CUPS was quickly adopted as the default printing system for several Linux distributions, including Red Hat Linux.[citation needed] In March 2002, Apple Inc. adopted CUPS as the printing system for Mac OS X 10.2. In February 2007, Apple Inc. hired chief developer Michael Sweet and purchased the CUPS source code.

    Cups was Open Source for 6 years before Apple supposedly bought it.

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  4. To Read The Fine Patent Application... by Guy+Harris · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's Patent Application 20110194140 ; here's the application.

    And, yes, that's Michael "Mr. CUPS" Sweet in the Inventors list.

  5. Re:mmmm by Goaway · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you buy the copyright to a GPL'd work, it is yours. You can change the license to anything you want. You can't change the already released versions, of course, but anything from that point onwards is entirely up to you.