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Fiery Enhances iOS Printing Solution
Posted On October 24, 2011 By Kevin O'Brien
As Apple continues to put out quality products, the number of handheld devices, such as the iPad and iPhone, continue to skyrocket in the workplace. Most people are still using a PC or Mac for their everyday office tasks, but more and more are finding the need to enable mobile printing from their handheld. Many are even swapping the paper and pencil during meetings and opting for the iPad but most of those notes are eventually printed.
We previously blogged about the PrintMe Connect solution from EFI which allows for your Apple iOS device to print to a Fiery enabled MFD (multifunctional device). PrintMe is a fantastic (and free) solution however it does require that an additional piece of software be installed on a PC or server. For businesses out there who are dedicated Mac users this posed a problem since the software installation required the Windows platform. Unless you were willing to fire up a Windows VM (virtual machine) then this solution was unfortunately just beyond your reach. Fiery has answered these concerns and now some specific Fiery print controllers can be enabled for direct printing from your iOS device.
The setup is quite simple. If your Fiery is supported, then a software patch enables the option followed by a quick configuration. Communication does rely on IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) for print submission and Bonjour for the discovery aspect so those protocols must be allowed within the LAN. Once enabled users can use the typical method for printing from their device, the newly configured unit will be displayed. Print and finishing options are of course limited since your iOS device does not employ a fully functional driver but most users will be able to perform the basics. If this sounds like a viable solution for your business, please contact us at Advance to see if your device is supported.