A while back I wrote about a solution to allow you to print from your iOS devices to your printer, even if your current printer doesn't have native AirPrint Support. While FingerPrint (the App I wrote about back then) worked, it didn't work with every printer and not in every case. There was a print to your hard drive PDF workaround, but I've long since forgotten about all that. There were some readers of that post that suggested I take a look at Printopia and you guys were right. I've been using Printopia ever since and it just works!
Easy setup
Printopia installs as a System Preference on your Mac. I installed it on my Mac OS X Server since that Mac is always on and it's been running ever since. I don't even think about it. It shows up on my network to all my iOS devices including iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. I can print directly to the printer or send it to my Dropbox account as a PDF.
Some of the commenters even suggested a free way to do with an Apple Script instead of paying for any of these apps and while FREE is good, you get what you pay for. The free option only works on Snow Leopard whereas Printopia runs on Leopard (Mac OS 10.5), Power PC Macs as well as Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). You also get more options with Printopia like printing to your Dropbox or to a folder on your Mac. Yes it supports multiple printers too.
I don't print very often, but when I do I just print. I don't think about it. Printopia works!
You can learn more and download a free trial here.
Digital content supplier Zinio has a lot of flaming unhappy customers right now. For the past week or more Zinio.com customers had no access to their digital content.
The Zinio.com website and Zinio Reader apps have been completely unavailable and/or erratic for days now, almost a week. On the Zinio website, customers seeking information, were greeted with only a static image indicating that Zinio was offline. No other information.
Zinio.com is up and running more steadily now, and the Zinio Reader apps are working better, but frustration still looms high for some customers, and especially for those who still have gotten no relief from the inability to acess their digital content.
For starters, there was no information whatsoever listed on this static page to inform customers of what was going on, or when the site would be back online. No redirect, no email to contact. Nada.
Only days later did any info seem to come to light, on the Ziniophile blog. The said problem: "An outage at one of our data centers."
Customers understand that things can go wrong, and we customers understand that issues and problems may take time to resolve; even longer than we may like. But only by searching online for a couple of days was I able to find out anything at all on this problem. I was initially concerned with my computer Zinio app, but when a total of three devices showed the same problem, I knew it was something amiss on Zinio's end.
These days, It's completely unacceptable for companies not to proactively communicate issues of this magnitude with the customers they want patience and understanding from. And for the most part, customers will be understanding.
And, I'm pretty sure that the staff over at Zinio is working long and hard to resolve the problems that they find themselves knee deep in. But I think they got on the communication to customers part a little late.
It's true that most iPad cases that you buy today can also double as an iPad stand. Usually the cover flips around and forms some sort of stand so that you can prop up your iPad to watch content or read. However, the cases usually will only allow the iPad to stand in portrait or landscape mode, not both. This is the reason that I use iPad stands. I actually have a couple of favroites:
My travel stand
My favorite stand for travel is the Arkon Portable Foldup Stand for iPad and other tablet devices. It's lightweight and folds up nicely to fit in my computer bag. It's also very adjustable to get the pefect viewing angle.
You can get it here for under $13.
My second favroite stand is the Stump
This simple design is great for allow you to place your iPad in 3 positions both horizontally and vertically. I like this one too for the 1st postion you see in the image above where the iPad is slightly elevated instead of lying flat. If your organization is looking for a cool give-away item you can even order these with your company logo on the back.
You can get the Stump here for about $30.
The 1st iPod was introduced in 2001. Yes that was 10 years ago. It was revolutionary in many respects. Although the original model included a Firewire cable and was Mac Only, Apple followed up with the now standard iPod "dock connector" model in 2003. The dock connector has been great and widely adopted by peripheral and car manufacturers. While the dock connector is cool, I ask the question do we really need to plug in a cable to sync our iOS devices today?
Let's lose the cable!
Of course Apple still makes iPods that don't have built-in WiFi. These low cost models obviously need some way of connecting to your computer to sync the media. For those models the sync cable still makes sense. However, for iOS devices that have WiFi (the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad) I wonder why we still "need" to plug in a cable to sync media? Don't get me wrong, given a choice I'll gladly plug in a cable when I have several gigabytes of data to sync to a new device over doing it via WiFi any day. Yet that doesn't mean that I should have to plug in a cable for day to day syncing.
- Apple TV streams Gigabytes of Movies Wirelessly
- MacBooks, iMacs, Mac mini's, etc all can backup Terabytes of data Wirelessly
- iTunes allows Home Sharing via WiFi
- iOS devices can download Gigabytes of data/media direclty from the iTunes store via WiFi
Still waiting for my dream to come true
I remember having a day dream when I got my first car with an iPod connection built-in that some day I would pull into my garage, reach into my glove compartment and press a sync button on my iPod (or iPhone) and my device would connect to my computer in the house and sync the latest playlists, podcasts, etc. via WiFi. I'm still waiting for that dream to come true and technically there is no reason why it shouldn't be a reality today. My iOS devices have WiFi. Apple already allows you to download gigabytes of data (movies and apps) from iTunes via WiFi directly to these devices . Why not allow us to do it from iTunes to iOS device? Hey, it's 2011: I shouldn't even have to press a sync button. The device iOS device should just auto sync (via a preference) when I enter my WiFi zone!
FAQ
Whenever I bring this up to my gadget buddies, someone always has a "but what about ______" objection. I can usually shoot these down pretty easily so let's go through the common ones.
Q. Isn't WiFi too slow?
A. Yes and no. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be able to use a cable if you want to. I'm just saying that we should have the option to do it wirelessly. Also remember that Apple already lets you download gigabytes of data directly to your iOS device via the internet. My Navigon App weighs in at 1.52GBs and I can download it direclty to my iPhone today from the App Store via WiFi.
Q. What if you were doing a OS update via WiFi and your connection died or battery died?
A. OK, what happens today if you accidently unplug the cable during an update? In other words there are problems that can happen today even with the cable. If Apple were truly worried about this they could require you to use the cable for OS updates or provide the same warnings they do today when updating a MacBook/MacBook Pro when you're not plugged into to power. Lastly Apple could do it more like they do it on the Mac. Let the iOS update download first to the device before installing. If the download/sync were interupted then there would be no harm.
Q. Users would complain that syncing takes too long.
A. Yep, they probably would. Apple could easily pop up an alert stating that syncing more than XXX amount of data may take a while over WiFi. Let me make that choice and of course disable the alert.
The Bottom Line
Beyond the first sync of all your media onto your iOS device, there is little reason that you shouldn't be able to sync via WiFi from that point on. Apple let's me backup my entire 500GB MacBook Pro drive via WiFi to a Time Capsule. Yes, it takes HOURS, but they allow it and even sell devices to do allow you to do it. If I wanted it to go faster I could always plug in an Ethernet cable. Syncing a WiFi enabled iOS device via WiFi wouldn't take nearly as long even if the device were empty. Apple can we please lose the cable? It's 2011!
Happy New Year to all as we begin the first week of 2011.
My wish to all is for good health, for without it, truly, everything else in your life will take a back seat.
My post for this week also relates to good health.
The good health that you feel when you practice random acts of kindness.
And yes, there's an app for that.
Actually, there are a few, but one stands out for me more than others.
"DoGood" is an app created by a student organization at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI., "to Do Random Acts of Kindness at the University of Michigan. Our goal is to promote genuine acts of kindness. We expect nothing in return though we hope our deeds will inspire others to spread kindness through their lives and through the lives of others…DoGood inspires people to live life a bit better."
Admittedly I don't do much printing these days. Also I'd have to say that i can't think of too many times that I was looking at something on my iPhone and thought "I'd like to print this." However, with the iPad things are a little different. I'm not saying that I suddenly have the need to print, but I can certainly see someone making the case for needing to print from an iPad more so than from an iPhone or iPod touch. In many cases the iPad has become a laptop replacement for a lot of people and no one would think twice about being able to print something from their laptop. Apple also sells iPad Apps like Pages and Numbers and certainly you might want to print a word processing document or spreadsheet. Apparently Apple got lots of requests for printing too and they added printing support in iOS 4.2.
The iOS AirPrint built-in printing support is severely limited!
Although iOS 4.2 now includes printing support (AirPrint), the current implementation is VERY LIMITED. Out of the box you can only print to select HP printers. That's right! No Epson printers, no Canon printers, no other printers are currently supported. So unless you're willing to go out and buy a specific HP printer, you're out of luck. Rumor had it that Apple was going to support AirPrint "sharing" in Mac OS X 10.6.5 and the support for whatever reason got pulled out of the final release. That's not to say that we won't see it in 10.6.6 or 10.6.5.1 or whatever Apple decides to call it, but for right now it is what it is. Don't worry though, I found a way to do it now!
FingerPrint to the Rescue!
There's an App for that! If you're on a Mac with a shared printer you can download and test Collobos Software's FingerPrint App for Mac OS X 10.5/10.6. This App aims to bridge the gap between AirPrint and your existing printer. You can download the App and test it for a week at no charge. As a matter of fact they encourage you to test it first before paying for it to make sure that it works with YOUR printer. Yes that means that even with this software there's a chance that your printer won't work and that's exactly what happened to me. Although I don't have any real interest in Printing from my iOS devices, I still want the option if I can have it. So I downloaded FingerPrint and within a couple of minutes I had it up and running and ready to test. It saw my Xerox Phaser 8550DP printer and so did my iPad! Woohoo! However, when I brought up a page in Safari on the iPad and attempted to print it nothing happened. Nothing was ever sent to the printer. I figured, "oh well I guess I will continue to live without printing." Then Collobos updated FingerPrint with a new option. This new option allows you to not only print directly to a "compatible" printer, but also send the print job to the Mac that's running the App as an Adobe PDF. You can either "Send to Mac" or "Send to iPhoto". I tried the "Send to Mac" option and it worked! My PDF ended up in the ~/Documents/FingerPrint folder and immediately launched in Preview. So at a minimum I could at least hit print from there and get the printout that I wanted.
That's not good enough!
One of the most popular features of MacGroup-Detroit and one of the things that sets us apart from most other groups is MacGroup TV. MacGroup TV is the monthly broadcast of our meetings. It allows our members to see the meetings they missed pretty much on any device they choose. While it was already possible to download the meetings or stream time to your iOS device. However, MacGroup-Detroit is pleased to introduce a dedicated App for MacGroup TV.
How does it work?
Like I said, you could already subscribe to MacGroup TV in iTunes and the episodes will download to your computer automatically and sync over to your device the next time you sync. You could also go to the show in the iTunes App right on your device and start watching a meeting stream over the internet or download one. With the App you have a one tap button that takes you right to the show and shows you the most current meeting. You can "Star" your favorites to get to quickly to watch over and over or download them right in the App for offline viewing. Any meeting you start to watch and then want to finish later will pick right back up where you left off. Also unlike iTunes, our App allows us to easily include Bonus Content such as PDF notes/handouts from the meeting as well as bonus clips that only appear in the App. As we move forward this will allow us to distribute even more content besides the movie itself.
The MacGroup TV App is $1.99 and you can get it here from the 
When I'm at home, I need cables to be able to reach from one device to the next and usually the ones that ship with the devices are great. However, when it comes to travel I usually want short cables whenever possible because they take up less space and make it easier for TSA to X-ray your gear. I had found short cables for just about everything else I carry such as Firewire and USB devices, but I hadn't yet found short cables for my iDevices (iPhone, iPod, iPad, etc.). That all changed with a blog reader pointed me to Cable Jive. Cable Jive makes a variety of different cables and solutions, but the one that I was most interested in was their iStubz for iDevices. They cost $8 (half the price that Apple charges for a sync cable) and they work great! Like I said, they make some really useful products and I'm also intrigued by the DockXtender cable and the CableDrop 
When Apple introduced the iPod in 2001 it was clear that the iPod was destined to be a mobile extension of your music library. As time went on Apple continued to add multimedia capabilities to it including TV shows, movies and more. For the most part it still makes sense that you would use a computer to manage your media library and only sync the content you want onto your iPod. I guess it also still makes sense that you would do the same for an iPhone. However, do we really need a computer to use an iPad?
The woman who tried to buy an iPad
By now most of you have heard the story about the woman who is disabled and on a fixed income, who saved up her money to buy an iPad as her "first computer", only to be turned down because she wanted to pay with cash. I'm not here to get into that debate right now about how paranoid Apple is about someone potentially buying several iPads just to sell re-sale them. So they restrict your method of payment and quantities as a deterrent. Nope, i'm not here to talk about that at all. The one thing that I haven't seen anyone mention is what if she was allowed to buy it? Then what? She gets home with the iPad she saved up for month after month only to take it out of the box and not be able to use it. That's right. When you take an iPad out of the box and turn it on you can't do ANYTHING until you connect it to a modern day computer running iTunes to set it up. The question in 2010 is Why?
What reason does the iPad "need" a computer?
Last week I took a business trip to Asia and of course I took my iPad WiFi+3G 64GB with me. Since this was a business trip and my job involves doing software demonstrations, I also took my MacBook Pro. I planed to use the iPad primarily for travel and in-flight entertainment.
Entertainment on the long flights
The week before I left on my trip I decided not to watch any of my favorite TV shows that week. Instead I wanted to save them to watch on the long haul flights. So I TiVo'd them as usual on my TiVo HD and then using Toast 10 Titanium Pro I transferred them to my iMac and then converted them from the .tivo files into .MP4 files to be loaded onto the iPad. This worked great and I had several hours of entertainment to last me all the way to Singapore. Although I had games on the iPad, I wasn't in the mood to play any. Instead I just watched TV show after TV show or slept (ok, tried to sleep). I can't really comment on battery life because I had power at my seat on each flight. So there was never a need to run on battery. Since I'm not into books I didn't download any and even if I wanted to, the iBookstore is very lacking in titles at the moment. Every book that I have searched for that I would consider buying isn't available yet. So even if I wanted an eBook I would have to do it via the Kindle App.
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