AirPrint question

[IpswichSox]

I have a wireless printer (Brother MFC-9320CW) that is not AirPrint compatible. I need to be able to print directly from the iPhone's and iPad's Mail program, including attachments. I've looked online and found some apps, including one from Brother, that say they allow you to print some things from iOS devices to non-AirPrint compatible printers. I've downloaded and tried out a few apps, but they're clunky and don't allow printing directly from certain programs, like Mail. I did find a couple of CNET-type stories and forums that said they had a work-around, but they were from 2010, seemed sketchy and I was hesitant about downloading those programs.

This is 2016 -- there's got to be an easy fix out there (besides getting a new AirPrint compatible printer). Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[HriniakPosterChild]

There is an easy fix. Buy a new printer.

 

[SumnerH]

There is an easy fix. Buy a new printer.

The printer's not the problem here, the problem is the iOS device that doesn't support a 40 year old printing standard (among about a zillion others that the printer offers). Brother offers an app to work around that problem: https://itunes.apple.com/app/brother-iprint-scan/id382775642?mt=8 but it's not the same as having native support (as noted).

There are also a bunch of AirPrint to CIFS/lpr gateways available; you run one on your PC and your iOS devices will connect to it via AirPrint protocol, which it'll translate to something the printer understands and print it. Once it's installed, it's seamless (as long as your PC is fired up).

I've used Avahi+CUPS gateway on Linux; OS X uses CUPS, too, and supports Airprint so it's mostly a matter of tweaking the config rather than installing new software. Unfortunately pages like http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/1728 indicate that the particular incantation needed is likely to be finicky and vary based on iOS version.

 

[HriniakPosterChild]

I know about the gateway software but assumed that it fell into the bucket of the CNET 2010 stories. When I went down this path, I did not see any Windows gateway software that was free (as in beer).

I assume that the tweaking the finicky config is going to involve a lot of trial and error and would not have anyone to support it besides me if my wife or kid had trouble with it.

The cost of a new printer was going to be quite a bit less than a new Mac or Linux PC to run the cups gateway software.

So the easy choice in my house was to buy a new printer.

 

[SumnerH]

The cost of a new printer was going to be quite a bit less than a new Mac or Linux PC to run the cups gateway software.

(You can pick up a computer that'll run CUPS for under $25. e.g. the Raspberry Pi B+.)

It was mostly meant as a friendly jab at iOS's stupidity here; instead of supporting standards that everything else has been able to print to for decades, Apple forces you to use their new standard and jump through hoops just to print stuff--it's especially inane because AirPrint is 95% mDNS+IPP, so just exposing a single config box would've allowed printing to all the legacy printers that support those standards.

The ElpamSoft Airprint stuff is still maintained, AFAIK; it has been updated in 2016 and has full Windows 10 support.

 

[HriniakPosterChild]

I don't have a spare DVI monitor that could have accommodated the Pi.

Can you tell me what printing support looked like for phones before Apple introduced AirPrint? I don't know the Android, Blackberry or Windows phone world well at all. Did they support all the legacy printers?

Apple was pretty good about supporting Windows printers for OS/X.

 

[SumnerH]

Android has Google Cloud Print, which includes an official bridge for Mac/PC to legacy printers (including the option to print via a running Chrome browser that's logged into the same google account, so you don't need to install yet another piece of software), and Android PrintService, which allows 3rd party support of whatever protocol you want (e.g. CIFS/lpd/IPP for existing printers) transparently to other apps--once you install a print service, every other app see it as a local printer.

 

[HriniakPosterChild]

I know Android supports that now because my AirPrint printers also support GCP.

The question I didn't know the answer to: did Android (or Blackberry or Windows) support printing from their phones before Apple did?

 

[Red Sox Physicist]

I don't have a spare DVI monitor that could have accommodated the Pi.

You can run it headless and just use VNC or SSH.

 

[HriniakPosterChild]

Sure, once you have it setup, I'm sure you can do that. But my only PC monitor is old and has a VGA connector, and I wouldn't want to try to setup a new computer without benefit of a monitor. And (I didn't mention before), my old printer was a LaserJet 6P that I bought in 1990-something. Upgrading it was not really a bad idea.

But enough about me. Let's talk about an easy fix for IpswichSox's printing problem. Do you know enough about installing an Avahi+CUPS gateway on the Pi to walk IpswichSox through the process if he buys a Pi?

 

[SumnerH]

Sure, once you have it setup, I'm sure you can do that. But my only PC monitor is old and has a VGA connector, and I wouldn't want to try to setup a new computer without benefit of a monitor. And (I didn't mention before), my old printer was a LaserJet 6P that I bought in 1990-something. Upgrading it was not really a bad idea.

But enough about me. Let's talk about an easy fix for IpswichSox's printing problem. Do you know enough about installing an Avahi+CUPS gateway on the Pi to walk IpswichSox through the process if he buys a Pi?

He shouldn't need that. If his desktop is a Mac, he should be able to configure it as a gateway to print to ; if it's a Windows machine, he might need to install something else on it. But configuring that should be easier than setting up a whole new machine.

 

[HriniakPosterChild]

Cool. Sounds like you can walk him through it.

 

[IpswichSox]

There's an ungodly amount of brain power contributing to this thread (excluding me).

Question: Would the PC need to be on and connected to the network to allow the iPhone and iPad to print? (Not sure this matters, but MB Air laptops can currently print wirelessly, only the iPads and iPhones can't).

 

[SumnerH]

There's an ungodly amount of brain power contributing to this thread (excluding me).

Question: Would the PC need to be on and connected to the network to allow the iPhone and iPad to print? (Not sure this matters, but MB Air laptops can currently print wirelessly, only the iPads and iPhones can't).

Yes, if you go the gateway route.