Apple @ Work is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, Apple’s only unified platform. Mosyle is the only solution that integrates into a single professional platform all the solutions necessary to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage and protect Apple devices at work. More than 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to power millions of Apple devices effortlessly and affordably. Ask for EXTENDED PRACTICE TESTS today and you’ll understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.
If you worked in IT during the 2000s and early 2010s, you know that managing printer drivers was the absolute worst part of the job and was a big part of OS X upgrades. Manufacturers delayed support for the new OS X for months, and it was generally just an absolute nightmare. Then the iPhone and iPad arrived and changed everything… slowly.
About Apple@Work: Bradley Chambers managed the enterprise IT network from 2009 to 2021. With experience deploying and managing firewalls, switches, mobile device management system, enterprise Wi-Fi, 1000 Macs and 1000 iPads, Bradley will highlight the ways Apple IT managers deploy Apple devices, build networks to support them, train users, IT departments, stories and Apple products.
When Apple introduced AirPrint in 2010, most enterprise IT administrators rejected it. It looked like a consumer feature intended for printing photos at home on a $50 printer. When the iPhone and iPad entered the corporate world, something interesting happened. Executives started bringing their iPads to work and wanted to print PDFs and didn’t want to hear about drivers or IP addresses. They just wanted to press “Print” and let it work like at home. Instead of Apple embracing the complicated world of printer drivers, the rest of the industry had to embrace AirPrint.
The iPhone forced the industry to adapt
Apple is now so popular that AirPrint has become something that every printer vendor must support. In the early days, getting an enterprise MFP to work with the iPad was a nightmare for third-party apps and gateways. I’ve used a few of them and they’ve been pretty dope. Today, the sheer number of Apple devices used at work has led companies such as HP, Canon, Xerox and Ricoh to eventually support AirPrint.
Over time, almost all multifunctional devices have built in native support for AirPrint. They had no choice. Non-support for AirPrint has become non-support for purchases and rentals. This shift didn’t just help mobile users. Finally, how we manage Macs has also changed. We’ve moved away from the era of finding the perfect driver for the vast majority of our printing and AirPrint has become the standard printing protocol. No, not every use case can use AirPrint, but it has moved away from AirPrint as exceptions to the rule. You can rent several Ricoh printers and use AirPrint right out of the box without ever touching the driver.
PaperCut and modern print stack
While AirPrint provided connectivity, it didn’t solve the business need for accounting, quotas, and security. This is where solutions like PaperCut bridge the gap. PaperCut is a great example of Apple’s impact on the business. It works incredibly well with macOS, but it’s so easy for iPad and iPhone via a configuration profile. It’s easy enough for end users to install, but it gives IT the control it needs.
In a modern setup, you don’t add printers manually. You deploy a configuration profile, sign in with your single sign-on, and then you’re good to go. This profile tells the iOS or Mac device exactly where the printer queues are. The user steps in, presses print, and the job goes to the virtual queue. They unlock it at the printer by tapping the badge or a simple PIN code. It is seamless.
Wrap
We often talk about how Apple changed mobile management, but we rarely give them credit for fixing print. I just can’t handle printer drivers these days. It’s 100% AirPrint. By forcing the industry to adopt a driverless standard, they saved IT administrators everywhere the pain of printer-specific drivers and also made macOS upgrades much smoother. It took a while to get here, but the combination of native AirPrint hardware and software like PaperCut has finally made business printing a problem solved.
Apple @ Work is exclusively brought to you by Mosyle, Apple’s only unified platform. Mosyle is the only solution that integrates into a single professional platform all the solutions necessary to seamlessly and automatically deploy, manage and protect Apple devices at work. More than 45,000 organizations trust Mosyle to power millions of Apple devices effortlessly and affordably. Ask for EXTENDED PRACTICE TESTS today and you’ll understand why Mosyle is everything you need to work with Apple.
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