Printing from your iPhone , iPod pinch , and now your iPad should n’t be difficult , but it is . Think about it : all three nomadic equipment have built - in Wi - Fi connectivity , meaning that from the outset its house decorator saw the equipment being part of a electronic internet , whether it was a home wireless setup or one that you relate to while jaw a café . The iPhone and iPod hint also number with a set of built - in apps — Mail , Photos , Notes , and Safari — that would , on a background , feature a Print choice as a thing of course . Yet these apps , considered so crucial to the iPhone OS experience that you’re able to not edit them , do not allow you to print .
The mere mode to publish from one of these roving machine is not to print at all : it ’s to do what most substance abuser in all probability do , which is to atomic number 99 - mail yourself the picture , contact , or note in question and then expect until you get to a Mac or PC , retrieve the e - post , and either get to the uniform resource locator or print the attach pic or the message of the message . Though simple , this is not an especially easy or refined solution . Its biggest merit is that it act upon consistently and reliably , and almost ensures you do n’t lose life-sustaining information .
fortuitously , third - political party app makers have occur out with a number of products plan specifically for printing from your iPhone . Some of these apps have been upgraded many times since their introduction — including new hybrid interpretation that course on the iPad as well as Apple ’s other machine . The end upshot : a variety of fairly good printing solvent are useable in the App Store . ( We brush up a trio of apps elsewhere on Macworld.com . )
PrinterShare from Dynamix is one of the many third-party options available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users looking to print from their handheld device.
How they work
PrinterShare from Dynamix is one of the many third - political party options usable for iPhone , iPod touch , and iPad drug user looking to impress from their handheld gadget .
Still , exploiter have some vault to jump through before they can print from an iPhone or iPad . First , of coure , they have to bribe and install a print app . Then , there ’s the matter of configure it — rarely a simple process .
There ’s another yield , too . give way the limitations of the current iPhone bone — you could only run one app at a sentence — printing inevitably interrupts work flow . To print anything , you have to stop what you ’re doing , give your printing app , provide or assemble some sort of material , print it , then pop off the app and resume what you had been doing . There ’s no path around it — at least not until the iPhone 4.0 OS update arrives this summer and bringsmultitaskingwith it .
ePrint’s print preview screen provides many layout options for printing photo albums, as shown here, and also provides thumbnail and full-screen previews of each page.
Most iPhone printing apps make in a like fashion : when you open up them you have access to your stored exposure , your contact ( usually ) , and a build - in internet browser app . Many of the apps , include more than a half - dozen very serious ones offer byEuroSmartz , require you to download , configure , and keep run a program on a Mac or PC that ’s link to a printing machine . Others , such as Dynamix Software’sPrinterShare , enable you to publish to your business organisation or home printer via a Web account .
And some , like Microtech ’s elegantePrintand Wellala’sPrint Magicenable you to print to any printer tie to your electronic connection , without the scuffle of configuring intermediary computer software on a Mac or PC .
Printing problems
ePrint ’s print trailer projection screen leave many layout options for print photograph albums , as render here , and also provides thumbnail and full - screen previews of each Thomas Nelson Page .
There is one major defect that plagues all of these apps : none of them enable you to import your Safari bookmarks . This seems to be a limitation impose by the iPhone ’s software system . Most allow you to save bookmarks , and some , such as ePrint , even economize your browser app history . But no matter what , if you want to print WWW varlet , you ’ll be tap in lots of URLs .
A common , but not universal , problem with iPhone printing apps is that sometimes Web pages will not print in a readable fashion : depend on the app you pick out , you usually have slight or no control over how a printed Web page appears .
EuroSmartz’s iPad-optimized version of PrintCentral takes advantage of the Document Support feature in iPhone 3.2.
There are exception . The better apps — ePrint , for example , and and EuroSmartz ’s DocPrinter — data format varlet aright for readable printing , enable you to select a default font sizing for printed Web pages , and may even provide print preview thumbnail .
Photo printing
If you are interested in only impression photos , printer manufacturers Canon , Epson , and Hewlett - Packard tender free Wi - Fi apps that enable you to do so — but only with their respective pressman .
These apps have experience only fair revue from App Store drug user , in large part because of the photo- and printer - specific limitations . But you may also utilise these apps to publish screenshots you have taken of annotation and portions of vane Sir Frederick Handley Page — anything you may capture on your iPhone screen . ( You take a screenshot on the iPhone by pushing the nursing home screen release on the front bottom shopping center of your iPhone and the on / off switch on the top right-hand side at the same time ; the screen shots are lay in in your Photos subroutine library ) .
Try before you buy
If you want to give printing from your iPhone a endeavour , it ’s probably good to try a liberal oblation , such as ePrint Free or Printer Test for Print Magic , or an inexpensive app such as the $ 3 ePrint . There are limitations to the free offerings , but they give you a spirit for how iPhone printing whole kit and caboodle . On the other hand , ePrint is a good full - featured printing app and one of the least expensive usable .
Printing from an iPad
EuroSmartz ’s iPad - optimize version of PrintCentral take advantage of the Document Support feature in iPhone 3.2 .
Not much has shift on the printing front since the iPad arrived in former April . Apple ’s latest nomadic equipment has no built - in printing process functionality , go away users to turn to third - party apps for their printing process needs . Pocket Watch , Microtech , Dynamix , and EuroSmartz have all produced optimize version of their printing apps that lead on the iPad as well as the iPhone and iPod signature .
EuroSmartz has even get along out with an iPad - optimized interlingual rendition of its PrintCentral app that direct reward of the Document Support feature in the iPhone 3.2 osmium .
Document Support , which only work out with the iPad at present tense , lets one app egest a single file onto another app . In the case of PrintCentral , that intend you may get a file via your iPad ’s Mail client and straight off send it to the EuroSmartz app for printing or for storage and change .
It ’s not precisely multi - tasking , but it ’s a way for third - company app Jehovah to remove at least some of the hurdle that fend between user of Apple ’s wandering devices and impress documents .
[ Jeff Merron is a free lance writer and editor living in North Carolina . ]
