AirPrint

[John A. Murdie]

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/09/15airprint.html

I'll simply observe that AirPrint might pose a challenge to those of us who operate a billed printing regime based on CUPS running on Linux servers (in my case, in an academic environment). I've not used HP's ePrint, but I presume it to be a distributed, unbilled system. "AirPrint automatically finds printers on local networks and can print" sounds insecure to me. Who will pay for what the users print - how will we bill them?

We have plenty of users with iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads who will expect to print from Day One of iOS 4.2 being available. If iOS 4.2 comes with Kerberos and AirPrint allows printing via IPP then it should be easy (even if we have to instruct users how to configure their systems); if not, perhaps hard.

I'm fully aware that Mike (Sweet) will not be allowed to give any more information than Apple makes available at any time, but I would be interested in others' thoughts about this, based on what is known publicly. I'll be reading any technical information I can find myself.

John A. Murdie