Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that Apple will be “accelerating” the development of three upcoming AI wearables: smart glasses, a pendant, and AirPods with cameras. These three products are all meant to integrate Siri deeper into our everyday lives, and I’ll be focusing on the glasses aspect of it.
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If you worked in IT during the 2000s and the early 2010s, you know that printer driver management was the absolute worst part of the job and was a huge part of OS X upgrades. Manufacturers delayed support for the new OS X for months, and it was generally just an absolute nightmare. Then the iPhone and iPad arrived and changed everything… slowly.
About Apple @ Work: Bradley Chambers managed an enterprise IT network from 2009 to 2021. Through his experience deploying and managing firewalls, switches, a mobile device management system, enterprise grade Wi-Fi, 1000s of Macs, and 1000s of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple IT managers deploy Apple devices, build networks to support them, train users, stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for IT departments.
When Apple introduced AirPrint in 2010, most enterprise IT admins dismissed it. It looked like a consumer feature designed for printing photos at home on a $50 printer. As the iPhone and iPad infiltrated the corporate world, something interesting happened. Executives started bringing their iPads to work and wanted to print PDFs, and they did not want to hear about drivers or IP addresses. They just wanted to hit “Print” and have it work like it did at home. Instead of Apple adopting the complicated world of printer drivers, the rest of the industry had to adopt AirPrint.
Apple is so popular now that AirPrint has become something every printer vendor has to support. In the early days, getting an enterprise multifunction printer to work with an iPad was a nightmare of third-party apps and gateways. I used multiple of them, and they were kinda junky. Today, the sheer volume of Apple devices used at work forced companies like HP, Canon, Xerox, and Ricoh eventually to support AirPrint.
Over time, almost all MFPs built in native support for AirPrint. They had no choice. Not supporting AirPrint became a non-starter for purchases and leases. This shift didn’t just help mobile users. It eventually changed how we manage Macs as well. We moved away from the era of finding the perfect driver for the vast majority of our printing to AirPrint becoming the standard printing protocol. No, not every use case can use AirPrint, but it has gone from AirPrint being the exception to the rule. You could lease a couple of Ricoh printers and use AirPrint right out of the box without ever touching a driver.
While AirPrint provided the connection, it didn’t solve the enterprise need for accounting, quotas, and security. That is where solutions like PaperCut have bridged the gap. PaperCut is a great example of Apple’s impact on the enterprise. It works incredibly well with macOS, but it is so easy for iPad and iPhone via a configuration profile. It is easy enough for end users to install it, but gives IT the control it needs.
In a modern setup, you don’t manually add printers. You deploy a configuration profile, log in through your SSO, and then you are up and running. This profile tells the iOS device or Mac exactly where printer queues are. The user walks up, hits print, and the job goes to a virtual queue. They release it at the printer with a badge tap or a simple pin code. It is seamless.
We often talk about how Apple changed mobile device management, but we rarely give them credit for fixing printing. I simply don’t manage printer drivers today. It is 100% AirPrint. By forcing the industry to adopt a driverless standard, they saved IT admins everywhere from the pain of printer-specific drivers, and it has also made macOS upgrades a lot more seamless. It took a while to get here, but the combination of native AirPrint hardware and software like PaperCut has finally made enterprise printing a solved problem.
Apple @ Work is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Mosyle is the only solution that integrates in a single professional-grade platform all the solutions necessary to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage & protect Apple devices at work. Over 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.
Users will soon be able to mark messages as spoilers, so their content isn’t immediately visible to recipients. Here are the details.
more…Despite having just 3 billion parameters, Ferret-UI Lite matches or surpasses the benchmark performance of models up to 24 times larger. Here are the details.
more…Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.
Sponsored by Stuff: Stuff helps you get everything out of your head and into a simple, elegant system—closing open loops and reducing mental stress. Use code 9TO5 at checkout for 50% off your first year.
Taking proactive steps to protect the privacy of yourself and your family has never been more important than it is today. Buying and selling personal data is now a big business, with hundreds of data brokers devoted to doing exactly this.
Trying to manually remove your family’s data from the web is incredibly difficult, but fortunately there’s a very simple alternative in the form of Incogni.
more…My iPhone stays on silent most of the time, but a new iOS 26 ringtone has made me very tempted to rethink that choice because it’s such a pleasant tune. Here’s my new favorite iPhone ringtone.
more…Activity-tracking platform Strava is rolling out a new set of activity categories, including some of the most-requested from its community. Here’s what’s new.
more…Apple is rolling out the second Release Candidate of Xcode 26.3, which will feature agentic coding capabilities. Here are the details.
more…I have tested dozens of smart locks over the years for HomeKit Weekly, from the August lock to the latest Level Lock Pro. They all solved the problem of having to fish your keys out, but they never quite solved the problem of “my hands are full.” Even with Home Key, you’d still have to either get your Apple Watch to your lock or pull out your iPhone. Yes, plenty of locks offer various flavors of auto-unlock, but none are perfect and work 100% of the time. That is the problem Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology aims to solve. This week, I am taking a deep look at the Aqara UWB Smart Lock U400.
more…A new report from The Information details OpenAI’s hardware ambitions, and reveals that the first Jony Ive-designed device expected to launch is a smart speaker. Here are the details.
more…Despite having a 2TB iCloud account, I also have an identically sized Dropbox one, and the latter is my primary cloud service for working files.
The reason for favoring Dropbox over iCloud is the speed of synchronization. Dropbox almost always syncs near instantaneously while iCloud is much less reliable …
more…iPhone 17 Pro has been a huge hit, and one of its most impressive features is battery life. But rumors indicate the iPhone 18 Pro could offer big battery gains yet again, thanks to three key upgrades.
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Alongside this ongoing and rare price drop on the 1TB M4 MacBook Air, today’s 9to5Toys Lunch Break is kicking off with a chance to save $200 on Apple’s 16GB/1TB M5 MacBook Pro. From there we move over to the Amazon all-time low pricing on Apple’s 11-inch 1TB iPad Pro at nearly $200 off the list alongside the 46mm Jet Black Apple Watch Series 11 at $100 off. But we also spotted a particularly rare chance to land Apple’s black USB-C cables down at $10 Prime shipped or less in multi-packs as well as one of the lowest prices ever on the black braided Thunderbolt Pro Cable at $31 (55% off). Scope it al out below.
more…Apple last redesigned the MacBook Air with the M2 model, and per a supply chain leaker, the new Air almost came in the sort of fun colors that are expected for the forthcoming ‘MacBook.’
more…The last year has been an exciting one for CarPlay, with CarPlay Ultra launching and iOS 26 bringing some of the biggest CarPlay changes in years. Now iOS 26.4 is set to continue this positive trend, showing that CarPlay’s best days may be ahead.
more…Episode 060: First impressions of iOS 26.4 beta 1, a preview of Apple’s upcoming March 4th event, and why the upcoming low-cost MacBook is by far its most interesting new product on the horizon.
9to5Mac Overtime is a weekly video-first podcast exploring fun and interesting observations in the Apple ecosystem, featuring 9to5Mac’s Fernando Silva & Jeff Benjamin. Subscribe to Overtime via Apple Podcasts and our YouTube channel for more.
more…9to5Mac Security Bite is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, the only Apple Unified Platform. Making Apple devices work-ready and enterprise-safe is all we do. Our unique integrated approach to management and security combines state-of-the-art Apple-specific security solutions for fully automated Hardening & Compliance, Next Generation EDR, AI-powered Zero Trust, and exclusive Privilege Management with the most powerful and modern Apple MDM on the market. The result is a totally automated Apple Unified Platform currently trusted by over 45,000 organizations to make millions of Apple devices work-ready with no effort and at an affordable cost. Request your EXTENDED TRIAL today and understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.
Earlier this week, Apple surprised users with the first iOS 26.4 beta for the iPhone. Many were disappointed (including me) when the update didn’t include the much-anticipated improvements to the estranged Siri assistant. However, this was nowhere near a featureless update. iOS 26.4 beta 1 introduced at least forty new features and changes, including notable upgrades to RCS and Stolen Device Protection.
more…New references uncovered in macOS 26.3 reveal multiple new Apple hardware products coming soon. Ahead of Apple’s March 4 special “experience,” there are new references to two new Studio Display models as well as the oft-rumored low-cost MacBook powered by the A18 Pro chip.
more…From the dial-up days to the era of AI-assisted browsing, Opera’s interactive experience takes users through key milestones that helped shape the web over the past three decades.
more…In a recent statement to Brazil’s competition watchdog, Apple leaned on an increasingly familiar argument as it pushed back against pressure to further open up the iPhone’s NFC access. Here are the details.
more…Listen to a recap of the top stories of the day from 9to5Mac. 9to5Mac Daily is available on iTunes and Apple’s Podcasts app, Stitcher, TuneIn, Google Play, or through our dedicated RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.
Sponsored by Stuff: Stuff helps you get everything out of your head and into a simple, elegant system—closing open loops and reducing mental stress. Use code 9TO5 at checkout for 50% off your first year.
In a joint status report with Michael Ramacciotti’s legal team, Apple also disclosed new details about its efforts to depose Jon Prosser as part of the iOS 26 leak case. Here are the details.
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