I realise the thread title may sound odd, but bare with me and you'll understand my logic.
I've been using a Canon Pixma 2700 series (basically a 'standard' A4 stand alone printer) for several years, no issues at all - it worked well. When I initially installed Mojave, I couldn't install drivers for it - macOS said it can't find drivers, and to check with the manufacturer, Canon's website says macOS drivers are provided by Apple automatically.
Anyway - after talking to Apple support for a while, and then digging some more a subsequent day, macOS suddenly said it had drivers - it seems perhaps the driver catalogue on Apple's end was updated/restored.
However, and this is the problem that prompts the heading: the driver that's now available from Apple has a ridiculous number of options removed from the general printer pages option panes, and crammed into a list under "Printer Features".. I have, I kid you not, 3 options for "print quality", 2 options for "grayscale" (one of which has "on", "off", and "2", whatever the heck that means). Today we needed to produce some copies of documents I'd scanned for a visa extension (we need them often, so its easier to just keep scanned PDFs and print out the pages needed at the time) and despite setting any and all grayscale options to "grayscale" (or "2", essentially anything except "off") the documents came out.... IN COLOUR.
One of them we did manage to get in grayscale I think by not setting one of the print quality options (we generally pick fine quality for these documents as often they involve stamps on the originals that aren't particularly bright even on the original) but it's not clear at all what options affected it.
ANYWAY. As much as buying new hardware to fix a stupid software problem goes against my general ethos, I'm now considering just buying a newer printer, and AirPrint seems like it might actually be useful here (as it's not dependent on device-specific drivers, as I understand it), and wifey will love the ability to print stuff from her iPad or what have you.
So my question is this: can anyone (preferably with some actual in depth knowledge, but end-user experience is sure to be helpful) comment on AirPrint in general? Am I still going to end up plugging the printer in via USB and installing a driver to get advanced features, or does AirPrint sufficiently cover all printer features? Do any manufacturers specifically implement it better or worse than others?
I'm not overly brand loyal on this, but I've been pretty happy with the Canon we have so I'd probably default to another Canon, maybe something like the Pixma iX6870.
I've been using a Canon Pixma 2700 series (basically a 'standard' A4 stand alone printer) for several years, no issues at all - it worked well. When I initially installed Mojave, I couldn't install drivers for it - macOS said it can't find drivers, and to check with the manufacturer, Canon's website says macOS drivers are provided by Apple automatically.
Anyway - after talking to Apple support for a while, and then digging some more a subsequent day, macOS suddenly said it had drivers - it seems perhaps the driver catalogue on Apple's end was updated/restored.
However, and this is the problem that prompts the heading: the driver that's now available from Apple has a ridiculous number of options removed from the general printer pages option panes, and crammed into a list under "Printer Features".. I have, I kid you not, 3 options for "print quality", 2 options for "grayscale" (one of which has "on", "off", and "2", whatever the heck that means). Today we needed to produce some copies of documents I'd scanned for a visa extension (we need them often, so its easier to just keep scanned PDFs and print out the pages needed at the time) and despite setting any and all grayscale options to "grayscale" (or "2", essentially anything except "off") the documents came out.... IN COLOUR.
One of them we did manage to get in grayscale I think by not setting one of the print quality options (we generally pick fine quality for these documents as often they involve stamps on the originals that aren't particularly bright even on the original) but it's not clear at all what options affected it.
ANYWAY. As much as buying new hardware to fix a stupid software problem goes against my general ethos, I'm now considering just buying a newer printer, and AirPrint seems like it might actually be useful here (as it's not dependent on device-specific drivers, as I understand it), and wifey will love the ability to print stuff from her iPad or what have you.
So my question is this: can anyone (preferably with some actual in depth knowledge, but end-user experience is sure to be helpful) comment on AirPrint in general? Am I still going to end up plugging the printer in via USB and installing a driver to get advanced features, or does AirPrint sufficiently cover all printer features? Do any manufacturers specifically implement it better or worse than others?
I'm not overly brand loyal on this, but I've been pretty happy with the Canon we have so I'd probably default to another Canon, maybe something like the Pixma iX6870.
