3 ms·
It feels like we majorly lost the ball with PostScript (or something similar). Move the smarts to the printer, and then you don't really need a model-specific
by hakfoo 8y ago
It feels like we majorly lost the ball with PostScript (or something similar). Move the smarts to the printer, and then you don't really need a model-specific driver any more.
I suspect the real story is that per-device drivers allow you to patch around a lot of stupid or wrong behavior on the hardware side, and on the low end, let the host do most of the image processing so the printer itself can be little more than a bag of dumb stepper motors and servos.
- scarface74 8y agoMicrosoft has been able to guide other aspects of PC hardware since at least 1995. I don’t need drivers for most other hardware. You can even get basic functionality from graphics cards without drivers. When Apple convinced printer manufacturers to support AirPrint in 2010, iOS wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous. You can find a fair amount of printers that support Google Cloud Print natively. EDIT: After reading a little bit more. It really is the fault of the vendors. MS tried to simplify it. https://blog.thinprint.com/the-new-microsoft-v4-printer-driver-model/ https://blog.thinprint.com/the-new-microsoft-v4-printer-driv... One advantage Apple had was that printers had to be compatible with AirPrint without drivers for them to work on iOS, the Mac was able to piggyback off of that.