I recently got a question from a friend of the show that he would like to know how to print from his iPad. A fairly common question that did require some thinking on my behalf. The problem for me is : I’ve stopped ‘printing’ things out all together since we have the iPads lying around the house and seldom need to use a sheet of ground-up tree to write things down. Apps like notability let me easily take screenshots (or pictures) of documents where I digitally “scribble” on.
But for those who DO need to print for their iPads Apple has of course come up with “AirPrint” that lets you print FROM your iPad to any “AirPrint approved printers” Great when you haven”t bought a printer yet, bummer if you have. However : There is a cool solution. It does require a mac and its not free but for 19.95$ its quite a cute little app. Printopia lets you print from your iPad to any printer connected to your Mac or export to a pdf file that gets stored on your mac. You can even “print” your document or screenshot to Evernote. It gets REALY interesting if you combine this with a VPN. Out and about on the road ? Need to make a pdf of the booking you just made ? Or need to pop it off at home ? Why not use Printopia to “dump” a paper copy out of your printer while you continue on your digital voyage. Or perhaps you want to install it on one of your office machines and hook up the multifunctional printer so your co-workers can stop putting their iPad screens on the copier. 20 bucks may be a little bit on the steep side, but hey : at least you don’t need to buy a new printer.