I remember a few rumblings when the iPhone and iPod touch came out from people complaining that they didn't have a way to print. This kinda left me scratching my head because in the 3 years I've used an iPhone and the years before that using a Palm Treo, I can't think of anytime I had something up on my phone and said "I need to print this!" I guess I always rationalized that if I'm near a printer, then I'm probably near a computer too. Why not just print from the computer? Now let's fast forward to today when iPads and tablets are all the rage and now we have Apps like Pages, Documents To Go and Numbers that actually allow you to "author" documents on your iPad. This kind of changes the equation a little. With an iPhone, I don't really look at it as a device to create documents as much as I look at it as a device to consume documents. So again I don't think about printing. Even with the iPad, I really don't think about printing either. However, I get a regular stream of questions asking "can I print from my iPad?" So I thought it was time to address this and give you some options.
Apple doesn't build print support into the iDevices
Unlike your Mac or PC, printing is NOT a part of the iOS (well at least not today). So any printing that is done has to be done via a 3rd party app and even then is limited to what's allowed in the iOS Software Developer Kit (SDK). Also since there isn't really a central file system in the iOS, the Apps don't always have an easy way of moving documents from one App to the other. Although this did improve in the iPad and iOS 4 with the "Open In" command. Let's take Apple's own Pages app as an example. You can create documents from scratch. You can move documents back and forth from your computer via iTunes/USB and once you create a Pages document you can either save it in the App or send it via Email or the iWork website. Even pages doesn't support the Open In command to let you move a Pages generated PDF to another App. If you wanted to "print" a Pages document you would have to (gasp) email it to yourself on the iPad from the iPad as a PDF or Word .DOC and then use the Open In command as an attachment to open it in a 3rd party printing App. Definitely not elegant!
Which App?
Today I'm reviewing ePrint. ePrint allows you to print wirelessly (WiFi) to your network printer or to a shared printer connected to a Mac without actually having to install anything special on the Mac. I have a Xerox Phaser 8550DP network Postscript color printer that is plugged in directly to my network via Ethernet. So there is no computer required to drive the printer. When I fired up ePrint it saw both my Xerox Phaser and Epson Stylus R1800 (shared via USB on a Mac). I was able to setup the Xerox in a matter of seconds and printing a test page.
You can get ePrint here from the 
What does ePrint print? ePrint has built-in support to print pictures from your Photos on your iDevice. It can print Contacts, text from the Clipboard a Photo calendar or Photo Card that you create in the App as well as a web page from the built-in Browser. There is also a built-in Notes app that lets you compose text to print without having to create the text somewhere else and then bring it in. There are also border/borderless options and various paper size support.
How do you get documents in to ePrint to print? – Of course ePrint also supports PDF. You can use the built-in iOS "Open In" command on the iPad or iOS 4 or you can grab documents directly from a MobileMe iDisk or other WebDAV server.
ePrint doesn't work with every printer. So you'll need to check the list of compatible printers. Also you can download their ePrint FREE version to experiment before buying their more advanced version. This way you can check to make sure that it works your printer FIRST before buying the standard version (great idea on their part).
The Bottom Line
I don't have much use for printing from an iDevice. However, if you do it's hard to go wrong with ePrint until Apple builds in native printing support. I do wish that the built-in web browser had access to my bookmarks and the built-in Notes app could see my Notes from the iOS. Other than that, this is a solid choice.
If you're looking for even more bells and whistles, you might want to check out Print and Share for Advanced Printing. It costs more than twice as much at $6.99, but it does have more features if printing is really your thing. Otherwise ePrint is probably going to be plenty for the average user.
My buddy Jack Beckman recorded this video on how he uses ePrint:
Also see Jack's ePrint review here.
ePrint
ePrint allows you to print wirelessly to a network or shared printer from your iPad or other iDevice
- Microtech Corp
- Get on App Store
- $2.99
All info was collected on 2nd July, 2010 when the app was reviewed.
About Terry White
Terry is the co-author of The Best Selling "The iPhone Book" 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions. He has been active in the industry for over 25 years and is the founder and president of MacGroup-Detroit, Inc., Michigan's largest Macintosh Users Group, host of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and a technology writer - Terry White Tech Blog.
Too bad it can’t print Pages documents. That would be the first thing I’d want to print from the iPad, it being the word processor or choice.