Apple plotting to eliminate printer drivers!

[gunug]

Where I work printing is often an issue; mainly because the end users wish to have printers "everywhere" they want one and the powers that be wish to have each sheet of paper printed to be "billable" to a school, project, or grant source.  Printing from MAC's is worse on our leased Savin printer copiers because they generally don't have postscript heads in them and the PCL drivers for MAC OS don't support the account information that billing requires.  

The new idea is Apple is patenting is that printers will be an appliance; like a refrigerator that delivers ice cubes on demand to your glass:

QUOTE

The first patent filed by Apple outlines the driver-less printing process as discovering a universal printer via a discovery protocol such as Bonjour, the use of a network printing protocol such as IPP  as well as PostScript Printer Description (PPD) file capability. The three components can be implemented via one or more APIs that enable any application to access a printer without the need for an additional driver, Apple said. The network connection could be established via different types of network connections, such as Bluetooth, 3G/4G, Wi-Fi 802.11, 802.15 or “any” peer-to-peer wireless or wired “networking technology.”

http://www.conceivablytech.com/8817/produc...printer-drivers

[Xairbusdriver]

Great!! Best part would be making printing easier demo smart phones. Not sure it would be of help to you school's set up, however. Frankly, printing cost are so low, I can't see the the advantage of any savings with the "accounting" system. Surely the school system can use it's leverage to cut a better deal with a contractor. And even having a person (student in a business course?) account for who printed what could possibly allow a better print job (including PDF capabilities!). I was always under the impression that the customer told the salesman what was wanted instead of the other way round! It ain't rocket science!