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Common iPad Printing Questions

PaperCut supports tracking printing from your iPads (and other iOS devices) to your organization's printers. As well as plain printing, the PaperCut iPad App also provides the rich functionality desktop users are used to such as authentication, balance display and selecting / charging to shared accounts when printing.

Q. Is PaperCut's iPad Printing App distributed in the App Store?

No. PaperCut's application is custom configured for your site based on your network, print environment and settings. Hence it's not a generic app that's distributed in the App Store. Specifically it's a Web Clip App distributed via an iOS configuration profile. You make this profile available only to users in your organization/network. Installation is actually easier than installing software from the AppStore. No iTunes account is required. Your users/students/staff simply need to type in a URL in the browser and the App will automatically install.

Q. I'm deploying iPads in my school/college. What is the best way to deploy the PaperCut iPad printing App across hundreds of devices?

Asking users to manually enter/hit the install URL is one solution, however if you have hundreds of devices and are using Apple's profile management tools, other methods may be more convenient/appropriate. Check out the Advanced App Deployment methods outlined in Chapter 21.

Q. I'm using PaperCut's iPad Printing support and have problems with double sided (duplex) printing. Why?

We have found that selected iPad firmware versions have problems with double sided printing (duplex) - silent failure with no print. Our analysis suggests that it's a problem with iOS because no network traffic is sent through to the print server. The only known workaround at the current time is to print single sided. We hope Apple address this in a future iOS update.

Q. Can I publish my Windows print queues?

PaperCut's iPad printing solution is focused around a native Apple technology stack to provide the best results. For PaperCut to enable publishing of printers over iOS, it must be installed on a Mac OS 10.7 system. Windows / Linux / Novell networks can simply add a Mac secondary print server (e.g. a Mac Mini) to provide iPad Printing support to their network.

We do not have anything scheduled for development to add support for iOS printing on the Windows platform without the need for a Mac system. Our current iPad printing support uses components already available within Apple's ecosystem and we would either need to re-implement a number of key elements for the Windows environment or rely on unsupported 3rd party implementations. Either of these has considerable risk for all levels involved with regards to support and maintaining compatibility with Apple's own implementation. In addition, we have found that almost all organisations are happy to introduce a Mac Mini or similar in scenarios where there is currently not a Mac OS X machine available to host the requisite print queues, when considering the functionality derived from the relatively small device investment.

For those already sharing their Windows print queues to iOS devices using unofficial methods such as 3rd party programs the iPad printing app may work, however this is not an option that we officially support or endorse, and we are unable to support you with this setup.

Q. Which version of iOS is required?

We are officially supporting devices with iOS 5, and we recommended running the latest version of iOS wherever possible. If your organization has iOS 4 devices that you do not wish to upgrade, we are not aware of any reasons they will not work, but you may encounter compatibility issues due to the older patch levels.

Q. Jobs won't print.

1. Are you printing double sided? Try turning double sided off. There seems to be issues with double sided printing on some iOS devices, as of iOS 5.0.1.
2. Try printing with PaperCut tracking disabled (using Control Printer Monitoring.command) to help diagnose the problem. When PaperCut is disabled from the queue, "it's one less variable". If printing problems persist after disabling, then check the CUPS event log and/or look at the print queue/driver configuration/setup.

Q. Can I have multiple Mac print servers running PaperCut (e.g. to provide different printers to different subnets)?

Yes! Alternatively, to provide the same printers to multiple subnets, consider using Bonjour/mDNS "reflectors" (although you'll need to work out that part!).

Q. My printers don't show up on the iOS devices when selecting a printer.

1. Ensure that the printers are shared on the Mac server.
2. Ensure that PaperCut is installed on the Mac server (primary or secondary server install).
3. It can take a few minutes before the printers show up on the iOS devices. Has it been that long since sharing the printers?
4. Ensure that the Mac server is on the same subnet as the iOS devices. Bonjour/mDNS, the protocol used to publish/advertise the queues, will only broadcast to the local subnet without further configuration (a "reflector", the configuration of which is beyond the scope of the documentation).
5. Try rebooting the Mac server. This will refresh the list of available printers and restart the Bonjour services that publish them.

Q: Does PaperCut use AirPrint?

AirPrint is a technology that exists on printers to support direct printing from an iOS device to a printer. PaperCut can't work with this technology because it needs to intercept the print job before it reaches the printer (e.g. to stop the job if the user is out of print credit or is violating a print policy rule). For PaperCut's iPad printing, the iPads pass the job via CUPS - the print queue system installed by default with Mac OS X.

See also

Categories: Apple AirPrint, Apple iPad Printing, Apple iOS, Apple Mac OS X

Keywords: iPhone printing, iOS printing, enterprise iPad printing, printing app, print quotas on the iPad, iPad school deployment

Page last modified on February 21, 2012, at 05:43 AM

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