ConnexionApple @ Work: How the iPhone forced the entire printing industry to adopt AirPrint
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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.
The iPhone forced the industry to adapt
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.
PaperCut and the modern print stack
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.
Wrap up
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.
