back to article Alleged Jobsian email promises iPad printing

According to Steve Jobs, one of the iPad's more-glaring deficiencies - its inability to easily print - will be remedied. Someday. That is, if a thoroughly undocumented report from a MacRumors reader is to be believed. According to that unnamed source, an email sent to Jobs last Friday asking "Why no printing on the iPad? What …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. the spectacularly refined chap

      Re: It'll be no good...

      Unless it can print to a non-existent printer? The 8512 shipped with a dot matrix. It was the 9512 that came with the daisy wheel.

  2. DK6031

    Printing is one thing

    Not only printing but also the ability to sync or connect to iTunes directly over WiFi. If I have WiFi I don't want to have to connect it to my Mac or PC.

  3. Ben Fowler

    Printing TO iPad?

    What about the complete opposite? How about letting me print from any printer _to_ the IPad?

  4. Matthew Anderson
    Joke

    Of course you can print from it

    http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2010/04/blog_ipad_printing_big.jpg

    No drivers necessary. :-)

  5. Steven Knox
    Coat

    Well, of course.

    "Biblical terseness: 'It will come'"

    If you build it, it will come.

  6. mzilikazi
    WTF?

    Can't print??

    So....the $500 ipad can't print? Doesn't Apple own the Common UNIX Printing System? Tell me again how the hell does Apple do it? I just have to believe that their customers simply aren't that bright. Well.......if Steve said it was good then that's good enough for me!

    WTF because there is no icon of his Steveness bending a fruitard over.

    1. Sean Timarco Baggaley

      You're right!

      Fuck me! I've just blown almost the same money on an unlocked smartphone running an OS made by Google and... IT CAN'T PRINT NATIVELY* EITHER!!!!!ELEVENTYONE!!!

      How dumb must we Googlephibians be if fanbois are as dumb as you say!

      Oh wait: it's a fucking PHONE. I have a laptop computer I can use for printing. Phew! What a relief.

      Guess iPad users can also use their computers too, in much the same way.

      * (i.e. as a built-in OS feature, not via a third-party app which imposes its own obstacles.)

      1. Basic
        Thumb Down

        To clarify

        You're talking about a mobile phone - which the iPad doesn't pretend to be. I wouldn't expect a mobile to print natively, I would expect a tablet to do so - It's primary purpose is very different.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        A phone? Really?

        Try making a voice call on the iPad then.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Chaps...

      Switch to decaf, really. Made me feel much more relaxed...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Typical

    ah so this is the obvious feature that's missing from this apple device... there's always something!

    I thought from the title it meant they were designing a clip on mini mobile printing device, not that it can't print directly to a printer at all.

    They need to make them for netbooks - so you can print your boarding pass when on holiday!

  8. Trevor Pott o_O Gold badge
    Joke

    Of course you'll be able to print from the iPad.

    The Apple iPrinter is almost complete. They were waiting for the purchase of the iInk factory to go through. That's where the money is, don't you know.

    1. Tom Maddox Silver badge
      Coat

      No, no, no

      Apple is trying to figure out how to build a printer that can only print from an iProduct while using only Apple-branded iInk/iToner and print media (iPaper).

  9. Eddy Ito

    It will come

    with the $99 OS upgrade. Now I know why the Goog was doing that whole print via google server thing.

  10. strangefish

    It's the Field Of Dreams principle

    If you queue the print job, printing will come.

  11. Hans 1
    Jobs Horns

    I want airtunes ...

    I want airtunes on the iphone, ipat come on Apple, you can make that happen ...

    I don't care for printing, have not printed anything in years. I chucked my 8 years old HP 930C years ago and have stopped paying the ransom money for ink ... and ... I save trees!

    I want a tree-hugger icon ... ;-)

    First time I use an evil jobs icon, methinks!

  12. hodma727

    Ummm... isn't there a FREE App for that?

    I have PrinterShare installed on my iPod Touch so that I can print from the iPad if I ever want to (never have so far). I would assume this works on the iPhone and iPad too?

    http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/printershare-print-from-iphone/id317215292?mt=8

  13. John Tserkezis

    It took them this long?

    The fanbois can't be that smart. It took Apple till the iPhone OS v3 to finally get that in. But the fanbois had to jailbreak their phones to get it earlier.

    Again, it took this long to work out they can't print from their brand new shiny apple tablets?

    Printing from my ancient Treo 650 is possible out of the box, or if I want, there are apps that give me more capabilty. Yes, there's an app for that too!

    Not for the beloved iPad though.

    Watch me shed a tear. Wait for it, "it will come".

  14. Chris Ashworth
    Thumb Up

    Did no-one else

    Ever own a Canon NoteJet?

    http://www.smartcomputing.com/images/smartcomputing/fullsize/293n0912.jpg

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Simple....

    ...early adopters get the shite.

    So they buy at full price, then upgrade, at a cost.

    Later adopters get the better version, for the same price or less.

    This is and always will be the way. Let the idiots buy the shite, buggy & crippled version for twice the price of the later edition. Of course they will complain, but they are so dumb, they will repeat over and over again.

  16. Stone Fox
    Jobs Horns

    does this mean anyone can email his jobsness?

    Anyone got his email address?

  17. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Why is the lack of basic functionality

    not advertised?

    Fanbois will buy anything apple, no matter how shit.

    No Printing.......WTF

    (must make sure grammar and spelling is correct or the regbois will be down on me like a ton of bricks, s a d )

  18. Craig 12

    ipad sucks, but...

    Who even prints any more?

  19. The_Police!
    Coat

    Jobs

    reading El Reg?

    I wonder if he has you guys blocked by his iFirewall!

    iFirewall! Now is there an app for that?

  20. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Printing?!

    I think I've printed one document in the past 10 years. Yes. One. That was last October when I had to fax (?!) a document to a vendor before I could make a purchase from them. I had a moment of confusion at that point thinking I'd maybe fallen through a wormhole in space-time back to 1995.

    So, based on my own experience, I really struggle to see why such a fuss is being made about the iPad not being able to print.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I am the real Steve Jobs (maybe)

    It won't come.

    Ha ha ha ha ha!

    You'll have to stick with putting your iPad in a photocopier, the same as now.

    Hot damn I'm so evil I give myself goosebumps. But with an actual live goose.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    @Chris Ashworth

    Canon made a range of BN and CN laptops with built in bublejet printer. They haven't done so for quite a while.

    The BN's were sold off to Morgan computers to clear Canon's warehouses as they were massively overpriced for what the then market would take. They were also releasing the CN range.

    The CN's depending upon model had a b/w printer such as the CN500's (P120's) and they also had models with colour injets built in. The last one to my knowledge with a colour printer was powered by a P150 CPU.

    They sold a lot of them off to members of staff on a Christmas special and others were held back and used by the service technicians for a while in order to be able to flash the ROMS on their copiers. They were given a P166 CPU based machine. They came with only Windows 95 and had to be upgraded to 98 even to support their own service support tool. They weren't Y2K compliant but it was a simple fix after the roll over date.

    On most of the CN's the printer was built in to the docking station, which also held an Ethernet connection and had the option of a modem module being added.

    The BN's were mainly 486 based machines with the printer built in to the body of the laptop. The very early ones only had greyscale displays.

    The one really useful item as shown in the photo link you posted was their version of a trackerball/mouse which was hand held and worked very well, probably better than the touchpad on later CN's

    For their day they were very useful machines, but typically of Canon at the time overpriced. after dropping the laptops they made a range of ultra-portable printers. No where near as convenient as it being built in to the base with no leads to worry about.

  23. Wize

    "It will come"?

    Will the app be called Zalgo?

  24. Absent

    iPad 0.1 alpha

    My Apple Newton talks to my printer.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Printing?

    Of course they don't want printing. You can't print out an iTMS song or a game or a movie. If they gave you printing then you'd use the iPad to do book hotel reservations abroad rather than spending more money in Steve's nice store.

  26. vincent himpe

    Besides printing ...

    can we also have access to files on our network storage so i can watch my photos and movies stored there , and open documents ot read from there ?

    Oh wait i can do that today with something called a compjoutah...

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like