Printopia brings AirPrint support to all Mac attached printers
Printopia extends iOS 4.2 for iPhone and iPad AirPrint compatibility to any printer associated with your Mac. That's important because, while AirPrint was one of the most highly anticipated features of iOS 4.2 and Apple boasted that AirPrint mades it simple to print your email, photos, web pages, and documents, by itself it's currently only compatible with 11 printers. Enter Printopia:
Whether you have an inkjet printer plugged into your Mac, a laser printer plugged into your router or even a network printer, if your Mac can print to it, Printopia will share it. Is your printer plugged into your AirPort or Time Capsule? No problem. Printopia translates for your printer, allowing it to speak to your iPhone or iPad even if it's not an AirPrint-compatible printer. Printopia even supports many password-protected printers.
Printopia also adds a "Send To Mac" printer to your network. This virtual printing option will save a PDF or JPG file directly to your Mac. Additionally, Dropbox.com users can send files directly to their Mac's Dropbox directory for instant synchronization to the cloud.
It's baffling that Apple did not provide this kind of AirPrint support to begin with, but it's great to have a third party option. Printopia costs $9.95 and a free 7 day trial is also available.
If you pick this one up, let us know what you think!
App and Photography Editor at iMore. Mother, wife, and math instructor. Follow her on Twitter @llofte and send her apps to consider for review at iosapps@imore.com
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Been using the trial before making the purchase. Works as advertised. Really liking the print to Dropbox functionality. It's important to note that this only works if the Printopia application is running. If you terminate the app on the Mac, you will no longer be able to print. That being said, I does deliver the goods.
PC version coming soon?
Must have.... Works great!
I found Airprint Hacktivator app. It's free. Used for a couple of days now, seems to work well. http://netputing.com/2010/11/11/airprint-hacktivator/
Works great - no setup, found everything right away. Five Stars
How could this developer come up with this app in just a week time. I feel apple deliberately left this out to allow developer to make money.
Just downloaded the free trial. Wow. Awesome. Detected my networked printer instantly and printed with absolutely no lag whatsoever. Really like the ability to "print" (i.e. save) pictures (as jpg) and documents, etc straight to DropBox. This is also instantaneous. Will most likely pay when the trial is up.
AmiPro: AirPrint has been available to iOS developers for months, so its no surprise a developer had time to write this software. It is vanishingly unlikely that Apple conspired with a single developer for their sole benefit. Why would they do that? Clever people always fill voids left by large companies. No conspiracy necessary.
And now you Windows users can do this too.
http://www.9to5mac.com/38011/activate-airprint-on-windows
Awesome program!
As mentioned in an earlier comment, you can do this for free:
http://netputing.com/2010/11/11/airprint-hacktivator/
You can't do everything Printopia does for free with the Hacktivator, but they both work great.