Apple iPad and interoperability!

[+paul]

My dear wife has just bought an iPad. On the positive side, it has a fabulous display, and the interface just works. On the downside, Apple seems to do everything to tie you in to their world:

• AirPrint - You can only print seamlessly if you have an Airprint enabled printer on your network. I don't have one, but I do have a very nice, new colour laser printer on the network which every other computing device in the house is able to locate and use. Brother make an app you can install on the iPad which allows documents on the clipboard to be printed. Not as straight forward as using the normal print option, but not too bad. I have now found I can configure my Linux PC to offer its services as an Airprint enabled device (when it is turned on of course), and print over the network to the above printer using CUPS. What is wrong with Apple using one of the widely available protocols for finding and using printers across a network??? Apple owns CUPS, having bought it a few years back.
• From the mail application, my wife asked how to enter contacts (expecting an address book as you would find on a desktop PC). "No problem!" I replied - "use the contacts application". Once the new contact is entered, you have a choice of 4 buttons - send message, facetime, and two I can't remember. Anyway, she clicks the "send message" button, types in the message, but can't send it. It doesn't pick up the email you have just entered and use it - it has to be registered with iMessage! Of course you can create a new message in the email application and select the contact from there.

I will never buy an Apple product. Long live Open Source and Standards.

Edit: I meant this to go on the bottom of the Rant thread - sorry!

[Charlotte]

I can't say as I've ever felt the need to print from my iPad.  And if I'm sending mail from it, I use the Gmail app, which works with my Gmail contacts.  These also sync to the iPad's native contacts app, but I seldom worry with that.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Apple owns CUPS, having bought it a few years back.

AFAIK, CUPS is open source. Dunno what you are thinking of.

I've been an Apple user going back 26 years. They've always been like this. Didn't have a parallel port for printer connection, oh, no, proprietary only, that is changed on next model so you have to buy a new printer etc.

[Woofage]

Apple owns CUPS, having bought it a few years back.

AFAIK, CUPS is open source. Dunno what you are thinking of.

From the CUPS web interface:

CUPS and the CUPS logo are trademarks of Apple Inc. CUPS is copyright 2007-2011 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.

[Jaded]

She needs to send an email from the Mail app. Messages are different. Could be confusing if they were both called the same.

The easy way to do this (in Contacts) is tap on the email address that you wish to send an email to.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Apple owns CUPS, having bought it a few years back.

AFAIK, CUPS is open source. Dunno what you are thinking of.

From the CUPS web interface:

CUPS and the CUPS logo are trademarks of Apple Inc. CUPS is copyright 2007-2011 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.

Apple dipshits. It's still open source.

[zigzag]

ipad is a fine device for certain tasks, but the more i use it the more anti-apple i get. i get a feeling of being pulled in a very selfish and controlled environment.

[ian]

Apple owns CUPS, having bought it a few years back.

AFAIK, CUPS is open source. Dunno what you are thinking of.

From the CUPS web interface:

CUPS and the CUPS logo are trademarks of Apple Inc. CUPS is copyright 2007-2011 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.

Apple dipshits. It's still open source.

Open Source and Copyright happily co-exist. You retain your copyright even if you release something under a GPL-type licence, and you have the same rights to sell or transfer that copyright, which is what happened with CUPS. It doesn't put a restriction on usage beyond those stipulated in the licence, and the original owner's moral and Lockean rights remain unabridged. No evil involved. It's common.

I can't say I've felt a strong urge to print from an iPad, but I'd imagine a full CUPS implementation would add bulk to iOS, whereas AirPrint transfers the onus to the manufacturers and their hardware, and iOS only has to support the single lightweight protocol.

As Jaded says, a message is something else. Tap an email address (anywhere in iOS) and it'll open a new email draft in the mail app.

Again, not particularly evil.