EFI adds iOS AirPrint support to a quarter million Fiery corporate printers

Posted:
in iPhone edited January 2014
EFI has added support for Apple's AirPrint feature to its Fiery corporate print server, enabling iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users to discover nearby devices and print wirelessly.



The Foster City, California company now offers PrintMe Connect as a free download for Fiery users. The feature allows iOS 4.2 or later devices to print documents to any printers or multifunction devices running EFI's Fiery System8/8e print server and supporting Internet Printing Protocol.



Rather than being a cloud printing service, as Google has announced for future versions of Android, Apple's AirPrint is a local, mobile print protocol that uses Bonjour to discover nearby printers. It then sends jobs directly to the printer using a specialized page format that simplifies printing without requiring mobile print drivers or remote print servers (at least for printers that support the new protocol).



Only a few HP printers are officially supported by AirPrint, but the Fiery print server expands this feature to support any printer the server solution can work with, including large format, high end, and multifunction devices. The free EFI update brings enterprise printing support for more than 250,000 printers in corporate fleets, without requiring the purchase of new printers or the installation of firmware updates on the printers themselves.



Apple initially planned to roll out AirPrint support for all printers shared by Macs or Windows PCs, but pulled the feature before release, for reasons rumored to be related to disputed intellectual property claims. It's easy to add the functionally back however.



HP mentioned wireless printing support in its webOS event today, but did not elaborate, making it unclear if its print strategy for the new TouchPad tablet and Palm webOS smartphones is based upon the same underlying technology as Apple's AirPrint, or whether it is limited to HP's email-based ePrint cloud service.



Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    timuscatimusca Posts: 123member
    This is excellent! I work in a print shop and this will come in very handy as we have several multi-thousand-dollar printers with the Fiery print server.
  • Reply 2 of 12
    EFI made a bunch of their customers very happy.
  • Reply 3 of 12
    tinktink Posts: 395member
    I just switched our production printer over the new year from one that had a Creo print server to a production system with a Fiery 8 server. EFI just made me (and my co-workers) very happy! I never thought I'd be able to print from our iPhones to the production printer... really incredible!

    Now I just need to set up a wireless subnet onto the network and we will be in business!!!!!
  • Reply 4 of 12
    just curious
  • Reply 5 of 12
    Interesting. Since my printer natively supports the bonjour protocol, wonder if it would work already. My ancient cell phone could print text messages via IR with my old HP 2200D.



    Interesting too that the first article on this that Apple removed support for printing via shares due to a patent risk. I guess EFI doesn't have to worry about it but hmmmm.....
  • Reply 6 of 12
    christophbchristophb Posts: 1,482member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by joe in miami View Post


    just curious



    * nod *



    Canon does seem to be lagging on this one.
  • Reply 7 of 12
    welshdogwelshdog Posts: 1,897member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ChristophB View Post


    * nod *



    Canon does seem to be lagging on this one.



    Yeah and where is Ricoh on this? I've got a sweet Aficio MP C3300 that would love to AirPrint.
  • Reply 8 of 12
    I have been insulted on this site and the moderators don't give a stuff.

    These people who insult should be banned, instead I am being ignored or belittled.

    If these moderators cannot do their job properly, I think they should step down.

    Come one ban me, this will be just like censorship, because you don't like criticism right.
  • Reply 9 of 12
    The download is an .exe file! WTF?
  • Reply 10 of 12
    dogcowdogcow Posts: 713member
    Disappointed the server side is windows only. Really??

    Anyway it was easy to get up and running and I'm now printing to my Canon iRA 5045 with no issues.
  • Reply 11 of 12
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dogcow View Post


    Disappointed the server side is windows only. Really??

    Anyway it was easy to get up and running and I'm not printing to my Canon iRA 5045 with no issues.



    Yeah. I am. I have a Mac-based Fiery client. Why couldn't the download and install be Mac-based, as well.
  • Reply 12 of 12
    haggarhaggar Posts: 1,568member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DestructoTex View Post


    Yeah. I am. I have a Mac-based Fiery client. Why couldn't the download and install be Mac-based, as well.



    They are simply following Apple's example regarding corporate Mac support.



    "The enterprise is not our customer".
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