“Apple could be on a quest to eliminate our dependency on printer drivers, according to two recently published patent application,” Lance Whitney reports for CNET. “As described by tech news site ConceivablyTech, the first patent application suggests a number of ways to cut out traditional printer drivers as the middleman. One method would use a ‘driverless printing technique’ that would grab the necessary information from the printer itself. Another method would send the printer data to the cloud, where servers would generate the print data.”
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Whitney reports, “Apple’s second patent application envisions a new document format key, which would enable driverless printing by providing all the necessary printer and page configuration settings, such as resolution, print quality, orientation, input and output bins, and duplex support.””
Read more in the full article here.
why is Apple Getting rid of Everything. i heard that they are doing away with DVDs as well.
@Don
It’s best to focus on the job you need completed. It’s not really DVDs we care about. It’s the media stored on the DVDs that we want. If we can access this media by other means, then we no longer need DVDs.
Who needs to print if you have an iPad or iPhone. I haven’t printed more than 5 pages in the last 10 years. Any printer I have had dries up before I get to print the second page.
Paper is only useful if you don’t have a computer screen nearby.
Guess you don’t have kids that MUST deliver their work on paper in school, iPad or not is not relevant.
uh . . . As a publisher, I need to print proofs. Just because you don’t print, don’t dismiss it for the rest of us.
Yeah, so? They got rid of floppy drives while they were in common usage on Wintel machines and everyone bleated about how ridiculous that was. Nobody gave a damn after a very short while. Apple have removed optical drives from the Air notebooks, and few really care, because flash memory is so cheap. Who needs a DVD to store data when a 16Gb Cruzer Blade costs a few bucks.
I’m replacing my eight year old PowerBook with a MacMini. Not the latest, the previous model. The reason being I can take out the optical drive and replace it with a 750Gb drive, giving me a terabite of storage, and the SuperDrive is going into a ten dollar enclosure so I can carry on ripping all my CD’s. I rarely use DVDs for anything, if I need to carry data it goes on a memory stick or a card. When I can buy a 32Gb SDHC card for around the price of a single Blue-ray disc, that can only be written to once, then frankly the disk is a dead format. It just doesn’t know it yet.
If you can get around having drivers for things, making things more universal and needing less backend support, then you’ve made a win. Simplification of things often leads to a better experience. Drivers are a pain.
Are you serious. Having the printer drivers in the cloud instead of on our devices would be GENIUS. I’d imagine this would allow for OS and iOS printing to any device connected to the cloud with only the need for a passcode to access the device. Airplay on steroids…………Me likey
Let me clarify why I think cloud printer drivers would be great. First, these cloud drivers don’t need to REPLACE, but rather ADD TO the choices available for printing. Secondly, I don’ t see any reason that the printer couldn’t receive two transmissions: 1st is the driver info from the cloud, 2nd is the document info from the device. This would alleviate the security issues related to sending info the the cloud for printing. So it would go as follows:
1. select document to be printed
2. device (ipad, iphone, etc) sends print request to cloud
3. cloud uses device as a throughput for detecting printer
4. drivers in cloud send print signal through device to printer
5. device sends documents to printer
What I wonder is how much data would be required for the printer list needed for step 3. Other than that, I think this has great potential.
Most common folk can not understand this senario. This is the Holy Grail of print technology. Stop the print driver maddness… iLikey too. 😉
given how much OSX is taken up by printer drivers, their elimination would make it that much more lean and efficient. You know, small enough to fit on an iDevice (OSX / iOS fusion)…
how long before we hear about google print…print anywhere to any printer without drivers…lol….
Google Print+
You won’t even need a screen, your ‘friends’ updates will just spit out on a piece of paper. It will be like a time warp to the days of the Teletype but ‘modernized’ for the interwebs and the ‘entitlement’ generation!
Entitlement generation?
Stick to misunderstanding the video game industry, sport.
Would the paper border always be filled with advertisement?
cuz sometimes innovation needs to leave the antiquated stuff behind.. anybody missing the 3.5” diskettes ? I’m also selling a few 10 year old components. anyone interested ? 🙂
Am I the only one that thinks it would be ridiculous to send my data to “the cloud” to have that data sent back and printed out on the printer sitting 3 feet from my computer?
The security and liability risks alone make my head spin.
Maybe a have the local print spooler query the device for its functionality and send that to the application, oh wait, that is how it already works using printer drivers. hrm.
“Am I the only one that thinks it would be ridiculous to send my data to ‘the cloud’ to have that data sent back and printed out on the printer sitting 3 feet from my computer?”
No.
How long will all this send to the cloud and back to my printer. My wifi network works fast.
Agreed. And add to all this “iCloud” BS, those of us who constantly battle broadband consistent connectivity see that cloud as one huge thunderstorm spewing hundreds of lightning strikes. So much for downloading/uploading…
“Another method would send the printer data to the cloud, where servers would generate the print data.”
This is about the stupidest thing I’ve heard this year. There are plenty of people who live on dirty rural telephone lines who can’t get reliable dial-up connections, never mind the esoteric luxury of high-speed. Imagine having to depend on IRREGULAR dial-up just to do your printing!
The idea is stupid and a complete non starter. Beyond dumb.
That’s the wonderful thing about having *two* very different methods. If both are implemented, then it’s likely one of the two will work for you.
I think its a great idea to get rid of the print drivers. They take up quite a bit of room on the computer with the vast stores of drivers that are installed automatically. Printing to the cloud is an interesting idea but I would much rather it send directly to the printer not the cloud.
Anyone who has to deal with HP garbage printer drivers could appreciate this.
I didn’t know HP printers could print on garbage.
Way to recycle HP.
Go green!
You must not know a lot of things.
You must not have a sense of humor.
Thumbs up.
Coming up with a way to get rid of traditional printer drivers makes a LOT of sense. Apple is focusing on areas that cause frustration for a lot of users.
I’m not sure sending it to the cloud is a great idea but having some sort of universal way to get/set print settings is.
we already got rid of printer drivers years ago – its called universal PostScript – but everybody forgot and kept making their own drivers and even their own PostScript drivers too – obnoxious – bring the noise Apple and drop the heat Apple! Printer drivers suck and are what makes Windows so sucky. Get rid o them Apple!!
Where have you all been? This was implemented in Snow Leopard. you no longer have to install printer drivers manually, and they’re no longer part of Mac OS X. When you connect a printer to a Mac it will launch software update and download the printer drivers from Apple’s update server. when it comes to iOS, Apple opted to only support printers with “AirPrint”, a universal printer driver.
This isn’t new.
That doesn’t get rid of drivers, it just doesn’t needlessly load all of them on your computer.
You think Apple is unaware of the capability of their own OS and is trying to patent something that duplicates preexisting functionality? Come on! Think a little before you post.
I moved my computer and printer home and installed a wireless print server so I wouldn’t have to run cable around my office. Went to download drivers for my HP laser jet and read that OSX Lion would be downloading them through the software update.
Now this presents a problem since I’m attempting to work through a wireless print server and the printer is not hooked up directly to the iMac.
I guess I will have to drag the heavy printer next to the iMac, plug it in via USB, and get software update to download and install drivers for it so I can then drag it back to it’s spot all the way across my office.
Not having drivers to download is a pain in the ass.
That won’t be necessary. You don’t have to connect the USB Cable to the iMac to perform this type of setup. The Mac can also do this with printers it detects on the network. You just have to scan and choose a Pinter in system preferences or from the drop down menu when you print something.
Old School Mentality. However, your situation, i empathize with, due to the current state of printer drivers and the convoluted way in which they are developed and released.
Apple, the little fruit company wants you to Think Different. Give it time grasshopper. Be Grateful it is AAPL, not MSFT.
Print drivers are so 1999.
Seriously, what’s the one thing that’s still guaranteed to give problems? Printing.
I have a Canon MX860 on my Airport network.
Every time Apple updates Canon drivers, I have to delete my printer, download new drivers from the Canon website and re-add my printer.
So now I skip the updates from Apple, but it still wants me to download them.
Wish I could turn that off.
Oh, and then there’s this….
(I want to print a new Macbook Air……!)
I am soooooo tired of having to look for and install a different print driver for each printer and then have to do it for every computer around the house or office.
I would LOVE to have Apple handle the print driver jungle for me and have something that “JUST WORKS!”
Why aren’t they networked and shared?
Just wondering. Seems easier.
great! it’s sounds like classic music to my ears!
Obtaining the printer info from the printer itself would re-incite Apple to fully implement printer status from USB-over-network virtual connections. Too often we needed to connect to an USB printer directly to obtain essential information or to make settings.