5 ms·

> The printer industry is a catastrophe. There is zero innovation I agree with you that printers are still terrible and a pain to work with from the user's per

by avian 10y ago

> The printer industry is a catastrophe. There is zero innovation I agree with you that printers are still terrible and a pain to work with from the user's perspective. However, I don't think it's true that there has been no innovation. It's just that it has been mostly on the side of reducing per-unit manufacturing costs. I recently took apart a modern HP inkjet and was surprised to find for instance that stepper motors have been replaced with DC motors and optical encoders.

tonyedgecombe 10y ago
Absolutely, I remember selling the first colour PostScript printer in the UK to an advertising agency, they paid £25,000 for something much worse than I can get for £50 in my local Staples. However they have been absolutely terrible at the software side of things. This is a shame as it's as visible as the rest of the package to the consumer.
- scarface74 10y ago
  The software side of printers have gotten worse. Back in the day, when all high end printers support PostScript, you didn't have to worry about drivers. Now, especially with Windows, your printer can become obsolete with the next OS upgrade. At least on the Mac/iOS side, most consumer printers support AirPrint and you don't need drivers to support basic operations. I have a perfectly functional (cheap) color laser printer that doesn't work pass Windows 7. But works fine with my iOS devices thanks to AirPrint. It also supports Google's Cloud Print so I guess that's one way I could make it work with Windows 10 if I were so inclined.
  - sjwright 10y ago
    AirPrint is, when compared to what came before it, mind-numbingly simple. Printer announces itself with Bonjour, provides basic configuration (like choice of paper tray) with IPP, then accepts documents in PDF format. The end. Put simply, it upends the retarded mess of printer drivers and replaces it with something that does the job perfectly well 99 percent of the time. All it requires is for the printer to have sufficient MIPS to raster PDF files.
    - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
      Isn't it a subset of PDF? I thought the rasterisation happens on the host.
      - scarface74 10y ago
        It does happen on the host (I think). That reminds me of another advantage of hosting a network printer on the Mac. Even if the printer does require a dedicated print driver, to the rest of the network - including Windows computers -it's seen as a generic PostScript printer and the Mac takes care of the translation.
        vetinari 10y ago
        Raspberry Pi with debian and cups does the same job. Macs use cups too, they just use different stack for the pdf rasterization step. I'm using it to network-share an older Samsung printer that has only USB port.
- rayiner 10y ago
  > However they have been absolutely terrible at the software side of things. This is a shame as it's as visible as the rest of the package to the consumer. With PCL/Postscript/PDF support in hardware these days, what software side is there? Last time we bought a printer (an HP LaserJet), we just plugged it into our router and with zero additional configuration were able to print from our Macbooks and iPhones/iPads. It literally couldn't have been easier.
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    It seems to have gone in both directions, the class drivers on Windows are pretty much all configuration and little or no real software. However most printer manufacturers can't seem to resist bundling extra software to manage the printer, sell you consumables, etc.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    My mom has bought a couple of HP ink jet printers. The software has been terrible. That seems to be the case, that consumer inkjets have terrible software and lasers are fine. At one point while trying to figure out something else, I figured out that they had implemented the polling for the presence of the (usb) printer by having a Windows service rapidly and repeatedly start and stop a second service. So anytime the printer was unplugged, the logs would be nicely purged by this activity. I don't remember if it was related to those services, but they also screwed up the permissions for a service, making it impossible to use the normal tools to make changes to the service. The thinner drivers included in Windows 10 with her new computer seem to be better.
  - jcrawfordor 10y ago
    Most printers today do not have hardware PCL or PostScript. Inkjet printers, and cheaper laser printers, usually act a lot like the older "winmodems" in that they offset almost everything that used to be done internally to the host computer, including at least rasterization and even aspects of what seem like basic motor control. This is a cost-saving measure in the printers themselves, but comes at the expense of significantly more complicated and device-specific host-side software.
shazzy 10y ago
I think Aiwip https://aiwip.com https://aiwip.com are doing a pretty good job of improving the user experience related to printing. The flow is: upload documents, stand next to printer, press print. It also allows you to print from any other aiwip printer and printing for free.
dnzm 10y ago
> It's just that it has been mostly on the side of reducing per-unit manufacturing costs. And on the "let's see how much further we can bloat a printer driver, since 1GB to get letters from your computer to paper is obviously not enough".
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  That's what you get for using Windows. In Linux, the PPD drivers are tiny, and they never become "obsolete" like in Windows where you can't get an older printer to work in Win10 because there's no drivers. I hear MacOSX is about the same as Linux, and since Apple owns CUPS (the printing subsystem in Linux) that would make sense.
  - stagger87 10y ago
    This has nothing to do with Windows. The Windows drivers themselves are relatively small, it's the software suite they push that is bloated. The two download options for my latest Brother printer was a 2MB driver only download, or a 300MB software suite. I've also seen this for Dell and HP printers. I use mostly B/W laser printers, so YMMV.
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      It has everything to do with Windows, as you admit yourself here. On Linux, there is no included software suite, there's only PPD drivers. Those bloated software suites only exist on Windows because they commonly tie them to the printer drivers. As for offering a driver-only download, I don't think that's normal for consumer-grade inkjets. Edit: I'd also like to add that the whole "bloated software suite", not just for printers but for everything else, is mainly a Windows problem because Windows has a culture of downloading bloated software suites from the manufacturer, instead of having a "distro" with all the device drivers included by default along with lots of open-source software to use those devices. The idea of downloading some big pie of software (or getting it from an included optical disc) from a hardware maker, just to use your piece of hardware, simply does not exist on Linux. And that's the way it should be: the Windows way is what's given us gigabyte+ software suites for simple tasks like using a printer.
snewk 10y ago
and every dime saved in the actual purchase is lost when you factor in the price of replacement cartridges. Ultimately, the per-unit manufacturing cost reduction simply results in sub-par units that often break and need to be fully replaced.

by avian 10y ago

tonyedgecombe 10y ago

Absolutely, I remember selling the first colour PostScript printer in the UK to an advertising agency, they paid £25,000 for something much worse than I can get for £50 in my local Staples. However they have been absolutely terrible at the software side of things. This is a shame as it's as visible as the rest of the package to the consumer.

scarface74 10y ago
The software side of printers have gotten worse. Back in the day, when all high end printers support PostScript, you didn't have to worry about drivers. Now, especially with Windows, your printer can become obsolete with the next OS upgrade. At least on the Mac/iOS side, most consumer printers support AirPrint and you don't need drivers to support basic operations. I have a perfectly functional (cheap) color laser printer that doesn't work pass Windows 7. But works fine with my iOS devices thanks to AirPrint. It also supports Google's Cloud Print so I guess that's one way I could make it work with Windows 10 if I were so inclined.
- sjwright 10y ago
  AirPrint is, when compared to what came before it, mind-numbingly simple. Printer announces itself with Bonjour, provides basic configuration (like choice of paper tray) with IPP, then accepts documents in PDF format. The end. Put simply, it upends the retarded mess of printer drivers and replaces it with something that does the job perfectly well 99 percent of the time. All it requires is for the printer to have sufficient MIPS to raster PDF files.
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    Isn't it a subset of PDF? I thought the rasterisation happens on the host.
    - scarface74 10y ago
      It does happen on the host (I think). That reminds me of another advantage of hosting a network printer on the Mac. Even if the printer does require a dedicated print driver, to the rest of the network - including Windows computers -it's seen as a generic PostScript printer and the Mac takes care of the translation.
      - vetinari 10y ago
        Raspberry Pi with debian and cups does the same job. Macs use cups too, they just use different stack for the pdf rasterization step. I'm using it to network-share an older Samsung printer that has only USB port.
rayiner 10y ago
> However they have been absolutely terrible at the software side of things. This is a shame as it's as visible as the rest of the package to the consumer. With PCL/Postscript/PDF support in hardware these days, what software side is there? Last time we bought a printer (an HP LaserJet), we just plugged it into our router and with zero additional configuration were able to print from our Macbooks and iPhones/iPads. It literally couldn't have been easier.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  It seems to have gone in both directions, the class drivers on Windows are pretty much all configuration and little or no real software. However most printer manufacturers can't seem to resist bundling extra software to manage the printer, sell you consumables, etc.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  My mom has bought a couple of HP ink jet printers. The software has been terrible. That seems to be the case, that consumer inkjets have terrible software and lasers are fine. At one point while trying to figure out something else, I figured out that they had implemented the polling for the presence of the (usb) printer by having a Windows service rapidly and repeatedly start and stop a second service. So anytime the printer was unplugged, the logs would be nicely purged by this activity. I don't remember if it was related to those services, but they also screwed up the permissions for a service, making it impossible to use the normal tools to make changes to the service. The thinner drivers included in Windows 10 with her new computer seem to be better.
- jcrawfordor 10y ago
  Most printers today do not have hardware PCL or PostScript. Inkjet printers, and cheaper laser printers, usually act a lot like the older "winmodems" in that they offset almost everything that used to be done internally to the host computer, including at least rasterization and even aspects of what seem like basic motor control. This is a cost-saving measure in the printers themselves, but comes at the expense of significantly more complicated and device-specific host-side software.

shazzy 10y ago

I think Aiwip https://aiwip.com https://aiwip.com are doing a pretty good job of improving the user experience related to printing. The flow is: upload documents, stand next to printer, press print. It also allows you to print from any other aiwip printer and printing for free.

dnzm 10y ago

> It's just that it has been mostly on the side of reducing per-unit manufacturing costs. And on the "let's see how much further we can bloat a printer driver, since 1GB to get letters from your computer to paper is obviously not enough".

Grishnakh 10y ago
That's what you get for using Windows. In Linux, the PPD drivers are tiny, and they never become "obsolete" like in Windows where you can't get an older printer to work in Win10 because there's no drivers. I hear MacOSX is about the same as Linux, and since Apple owns CUPS (the printing subsystem in Linux) that would make sense.
- stagger87 10y ago
  This has nothing to do with Windows. The Windows drivers themselves are relatively small, it's the software suite they push that is bloated. The two download options for my latest Brother printer was a 2MB driver only download, or a 300MB software suite. I've also seen this for Dell and HP printers. I use mostly B/W laser printers, so YMMV.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    It has everything to do with Windows, as you admit yourself here. On Linux, there is no included software suite, there's only PPD drivers. Those bloated software suites only exist on Windows because they commonly tie them to the printer drivers. As for offering a driver-only download, I don't think that's normal for consumer-grade inkjets. Edit: I'd also like to add that the whole "bloated software suite", not just for printers but for everything else, is mainly a Windows problem because Windows has a culture of downloading bloated software suites from the manufacturer, instead of having a "distro" with all the device drivers included by default along with lots of open-source software to use those devices. The idea of downloading some big pie of software (or getting it from an included optical disc) from a hardware maker, just to use your piece of hardware, simply does not exist on Linux. And that's the way it should be: the Windows way is what's given us gigabyte+ software suites for simple tasks like using a printer.

snewk 10y ago

and every dime saved in the actual purchase is lost when you factor in the price of replacement cartridges. Ultimately, the per-unit manufacturing cost reduction simply results in sub-par units that often break and need to be fully replaced.