Printing often isn’t easy for iOS users—especially in large organizations. Luckily, Massachusetts-based Ecamm has just released Printopia Pro, an enterprise-class version of its extremely popular Printopia utility, which allows iOS apps to print to any printer without the need for special iOS software.

Like its consumer-level counterpart, Printopia Pro runs on a Mac and acts as an AirPrint server, allowing iOS devices to connect to it and send documents as if they were dealing with a real printer. It also circumvents the need to buy a printer model that supports Apple’s AirPrint—most of which are aimed at the consumer market, rather than SMB or enterprise.

Printopia Pro adds a number of features designed for corporate users to the mix, such as additional security, improved support for complex networking setups, and the ability to centrally manage arbitrary numbers of printers and users, tightly controlling access and privileges.

According to a company press release, the software is fully scalable, can support hundreds of users and printers from a single server, and is even capable of storing—rather than printing—the documents it receives to one or more Web-enabled folders. From, there documents can be accessed as part of more complex workflows for a variety of applications, ranging from education to business processes. However, it does lack some of the more consumer-facing features of Printopia, such as sending to a specific application or Dropbox.

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The Uncovermac line of products was created after this company's Amsterdam-based masterminds realized that the MacBook’s screen has a whole light panel behind it. They started designing the Uncovers, each of which offers glowing pieces of art—from flames to radioactivity symbols and more—to replace the Apple logo on your laptop. Prices start at €249, or around $325 in U.S. dollars. (Hat tip to Engadget.)

You click Print, and then wait a moment. Nothing happens. Your attempt has clearly failed. A brief check confirms that the problem is not limited to one document or one app. You can’t print anything. Now what?

The number of causes and fixes for print failures runs wide and deep across the Mac troubleshooting landscape. Here’s a checklist of the more common solutions.

1. Check the Print dialog box

After a failed print attempt, press Command-P again. You’ll likely see a badge icon, such as an exclamation mark, next to the printer’s name in the Print dialog box. You may also see a message appear, explaining the cause of the failure and how to fix it.

Find the right printer: One especially common scenario occurs if you print to more than one printer. You may have not selected the one you intended. If your Mac is a laptop, you may have last printed to your cousin’s printer while visiting her in Topeka, but now you’re back home in Portland. The simple fix is to choose your intended printer from the Print dialog box’s Printer pop-up menu.

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Last week I showed you how to configure your printer. This week, we’ll explore the ins and outs of Mountain Lion’s print sheet.

As you’ve learned by now, one of the Mac OS's strengths is its consistency. You needn’t worry that you’ll find the Copy command under the Edit menu in one application and under the File menu in another application. Commands are consistent in this way, and the Print command is no exception. You can always find it near the bottom of the File menu. Let’s run through it.

Easy-peasy printing

Launch TextEdit and open a saved document (if you have one); or create a new document, enter some text, and save the file. Choose File > Print and you’ll see a very simple sheet that includes a pop-up menu for choosing a printer (the default printer will appear here by default), a field for choosing the number of copies to print, a pop-up menu for selecting the page range (by default, all pages will be printed; but you can elect to print a single page or a range of pages—pages 2 through 4, for example—if you wish), a preview area that displays a thumbnail of the document’s first page, and navigation controls for viewing other pages in the preview area. To print your document, simply click the Print button.

The Show Details button at the bottom of this sheet hints that other options await. Click it, and the sheet will expand.

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The AirPrint feature of iOS 4.2 promised to let you print, wirelessly, from your iOS device to any printer shared by your Mac. Unfortunately, AirPrint ended up working with only a few specific, AirPrint-enabled printers. One of the most popular recent Mac Gems, especially around the Macworld offices, is Printopia, a utility that delivers on Apple’s unfulfilled promise—and does much more.

I originally reviewed Printopia a year ago. As I explained then, Printopia takes over where AirPrint leaves off, letting your Mac share all or any configured printers, no matter how they’re connected to your Mac, with iOS devices on your local wireless network. In any iOS app that supports printing, you just tap the Print button, choose one of those printers, and print! And Printopia works with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), 10.6 (Snow Leopard), and even 10.5 (Leopard)—and even with PowerPC Macs—making AirPrint available to anyone with a recent Mac. (Your iOS devices must be running iOS 4.2 or later.)

But Printopia had a number of other tricks up it virtual sleeve that made the utility useful even if you never actually needed to print. A special Send to Mac printer let you save—by printing—a PDF copy of a document, or a JPEG or PNG version of an image, to a Printopia folder in your Mac’s Documents folder. And a Send To Dropbox On Mac printer let you save a document to your Mac’s Dropbox ( ) folder, where the file is instantly synced to all your other Dropbox-enabled devices. These features were great for, say, saving receipts from online purchases made on your iPad or iPhone, and for transferring iOS screenshots to your Macs.

Since that review, Ecamm Network has released several significant updates to Printopia, including version 2.0 in April and version 2.1.5 earlier this week. Those updates have included a number of new features that have made Printopia even more useful. For example, you can now create an unlimited number of Save To Mac and Save To Dropbox virtual printers, each of them saving documents to a different folder on your Mac or inside your Dropbox folder, respectively. You choose which of those folders to save to by simply choosing a different virtual printer when printing.

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The Epson Stylus Photo R2000 is a wide-format inkjet printer that uses seven pigmented inks to print beautiful color photos as large as 13-by-22 inches, and even longer if you use the included roll paper adapter.

As the successor to the Stylus Photo R1900 ( ), the R2000 offers a number of improvements. While the R1900 was USB-only, the R2000 has multiple connection options, including USB 2.0, 100Base-T ethernet, 802.11 WiFi, and a PictBridge port. Expanded connectivity isn't the only change for the better, however. The R2000 also has higher capacity ink cartridges, which when printing poster-sized photos, can come in very handy.

Epson's marketing materials claim photo longevity of up to 200 years using Epson’s Watercolor Paper—Radiant White. The company doesn't specify the print yields of the R2000's eight cartridges, but claim up to 50 percent more prints than the R1900. Epson representatives say they are waiting for the impending release of an ISO standard test page for photographic print speeds. This makes sense, as the standard test files are meant for general purpose printing on plain paper. Unfortunately, this makes it difficult to come up with an accurate price per print and to compare the cost of printing at home versus sending your files to a photo lab.

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These days, color laser multifunction printers don't come at much lower prices than the HP LaserJet Pro 100 Color MFP M175nw. At just $350, it offers print/scan/copy/fax capabilities—and a lot of connectivity—in a compact, shiny-black package. Unfortunately, the machine is rather slow and limited for busy home- or small-office users, and its toner is expensive.

The LaserJet Pro 100 Color MFP is pretty easy to install via USB or ethernet; though the WPS-only Wi-Fi setup is relatively bothersome, you'll need it to enjoy the machine's compatibility with cloud-printing services from HP and Dell.

Using the 1.0 version installation CD, we encountered smeary-looking output when printing on heavier paper (including HP's own 220g glossy paper for color lasers). The problem arose only with certain applications, including Microsoft PowerPoint, and Adobe Acrobat, Illustrator, and Photoshop. HP has incorporated a fix into the 1.1 version of the installation CD (you can also find the fix online) but we wish that HP had made the update available for automatic download during installation.

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Installation is pretty smooth on both the PC and the Mac. On the latter platform, you have to add the printer manually (as is the case for most printers, unfortunately). Ethernet and USB connections are available. The HTML-based user guide installs automatically and is pretty thorough, but as it covers multiple models, it can sometimes be confusing.

The ML-3712ND has an office-ready standard configuration, including a 250-sheet input tray, a 50-sheet multipurpose tray (MPT), and a 150-sheet top output tray. An optional 520-sheet input tray costs $200. Automatic duplexing is standard. In a commendable show of support for saving paper and toner, Samsung also offers an Eco mode, which can be enacted from the driver or the control panel and automatically prints in 2-up mode (two reduced-size pages printed per sheet) and duplex. The control panel is minimal: a two-line, 16-character monochrome LCD, and a few buttons with inscrutable symbols rather than word names (except for the labeled Eco button).

Performance was better than average. The ML-3712ND printed plain text at speeds of 22.2 pages per minute (ppm) on the PC and 22.6 ppm on the Mac. On the PC, basic snapshots exited at a rate of 5.8 ppm. On the Mac, a four-page PDF of mixed text and graphics printed at a peppy rate of 6.6 ppm. Photos showed a surprisingly smooth quality, distinguishing the ML-3712ND from most other laser models in its price range.

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The ability to print on specially coated CDs or DVDs is still pretty rare. The Pixma MG5320 comes with a caddy that inserts into a slot above the output area; also included is an adapter for 3.15-inch discs. Canon offers no on-machine storage for the caddy, which is inconvenient. And the disc-printing process involves a specific sequence of steps that is confusingly covered in two places: under the loading/unloading media discussion in the Printing section of the documentation, and under the layout and printing explanation in the documentation for the bundled Easy-PhotoPrint EX software. The printer also takes a few minutes to prepare itself to print on a disc.

Paper handling is generous for an MFP in this price range. The MG5320 has a bottom drawer for holding up to 150 sheets of letter-size plain paper; a rear, 150-sheet vertical tray takes everything else. Duplex (two-sided) printing is automatic. The 50-sheet output tray is adequately sized, and it opens automatically when you send a print job. Other features include both USB and wireless connectivity, a USB/PictBridge port, and slots for MultiMedia Card, Memory Stick, and SD Card.

The scanner lid incorporates the control panel, which includes a 3-inch, tiltable color LCD. Navigation is a little more complicated than usual: A scrollwheel moves through menus, and an OK button chooses an item. Canon also adds three function buttons for selecting items that show at the bottom of the display. The overall setup feels like a few too many buttons—but as with many things, once you get used to the arrangement, it’s workable.

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Xerox's WorkCentre 6505/DN offers better speed and print quality than many color laser multifunction printers we've seen, for a good midrange price of $749. It possesses all of the strong features of the Xerox Phaser 6500 standalone printer on which it's based, but also the one notable flaw: expensive toner.

The WorkCentre 6505 was easy to install. Unlike the similarly priced Oki MC561, it permitted scanning across our network right out of the box. The printer supports both USB and ethernet. The control panel is well laid out, and we had no problem understanding the menu structure or navigating through the various options.

The Xerox MFP's paper-handling features include a 250-sheet paper cassette with a manual-feed slot and a 150-page output tray. An optional second 250-sheet input tray costs $199. The unit has a letter/A4-size scanner platen, and the 35-page automatic document feeder accepts up to legal-size documents. Scanning through the ADF is simplex (single-sided) only, but duplex (double-sided) printing and copying are standard. With the 6505's slightly more basic, $649 cousin, the Xerox WorkCentre 6505/N, duplexing is manual and is available only through the PCL driver.

Speed is a highlight of the WorkCentre 6505. Its 533MHz processor and 256MB of RAM (upgradable to 768MB) give it more than enough power to serve a typical workgroup. Plain-text pages and our monochrome newsletter exited at a rate of just over 15.1 pages per minute on the PC and at 14.3 ppm on the Mac. On the PC, snapshot photos arrived at a faster-than-average rate of 3 ppm at default settings on plain paper and at a slower-than average 1.4 ppm at better settings on glossy paper. A full-size photo printed on the Mac took a hair under 2 minutes to emerge.

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The Canon Pixma iX6520 is a wide-format inkjet printer meant for small offices wanting to produce colorful, printed marketing materials or large spreadsheets up to 13 by 19 inches.

The piano-black iX6520 weighs 16.7 pounds and, due to its tabloid-sized print capabilities, takes up a considerable amount of room when the trays are fully extended. You connect the printer to your Mac via USB 2.0. Setup includes installing a separate print head and five individual ink tanks: cyan, magenta, yellow, black, and pigment black.

Replacement cartridges are $66. Based on Canon’s yield claims, 4-by-6 photos use about 24 cents worth of ink, and letter-sized documents with both graphics and text use about 13 cents worth of ink. These costs are about average compared to other inkjet printers.

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Lexmark International has exited the inkjet printer business and is laying off 1700 people as part of a restructuring plan to improve profitability.

Lexmark’s restructuring will result in job cuts mainly tied to the inkjet business, including 1100 manufacturing positions, the company said in a statement Tuesday. As part of the restructuring plan, the company is shutting down an inkjet supplies manufacturing facility in the Philippines by the end of 2015, and eliminating other inkjet development assets by the end of 2013.

While the company will stop offering inkjet printers, it will continue to provide support, services and supplies for its inkjet installed base, said Marty Canning, Lexmark executive vice president and president of imaging solutions and services. Supplies will continue to be available through the channel and the company’s website, and Lexmark will fulfill warranties.

Lexmark will now exit the consumer business and focus on enterprise products, including higher-margin products such as multifunction printers, managed print services, content management and other software products, Canning said. Lexmark is also working with advisers to explore the sale of its inkjet-related technology.

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Canon has announced several new photo printers—three all-in-one desktop models and a compact unit—designed for consumers and photo enthusiasts. They feature, in various combinations, wireless capability, Apple AirPrint and other mobile printing functionality, auto-duplexing, and software that lets you enhance images both online and off.

All-in ones

Canon has introduced three new desktop multifunction models that print, copy, and scan—the Pixma MG4220 Wireless, the Pixma MG3220 Wireless, and the Pixma MG2220, a non-wireless printer.

Each has the company’s new FastFront feature that facilitates easy changing of ink and paper from the front of the printer. They can also produce borderless, edge-to-edge 4-by-6-inch photos in approximately 44 seconds at a maximum color resolution of 4800-by-2400 dots per inch (dpi).

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Hewlett-Packard on Wednesday announced the OfficeJet 150 Mobile All-in-One portable printer, which the company called the world’s first mobile multifunction device that can “print, copy and scan on the go.”

HP hopes to provide a printer, copier and scanner that users can carry on the road, just like laptops. At 6.8 pounds, the multifunction device is lighter than stationary inkjets, making it easy to move inside homes or between work sites. The printer measures 13.98 by 6.95 by 3.52 inches.

While the OfficeJet 150 is a breakthrough in design, the all-in-one feels as bulky as a high-end gaming laptop, and may not be practical to carry to work on a daily basis. The device is priced at $399, which is relatively high compared to HP’s standard all-in-one inkjet multifunction devices, which are available starting at under $100. The OfficeJet 150 will start shipping worldwide in May.

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The days are getting longer, and the weather’s getting warmer. You’re forgiven if you forgot to refresh Macworld.com as obsessively as often. Luckily, the Weekly Wrap, our collection of the best Macworld stories from the week gone by, is here to help you catch up on what you missed.

On the Mac side

Apple released a standalone Flashback removal tool; if you haven’t run Software Update, take a few minutes now and do so. We’d rather you ensure your Mac is clean and protected than that you finish reading the Weekly Wrap. Just promise you’ll come back again later.

In addition to eradicating Flashback, Apple put an end to free trials for iWork and Aperture. But while Apple taketh away, it also giveth, at least if you’re still running Leopardeth: The company is offering Snow Leopard as a free upgrade to MobileMe customers with the aim of getting them signed up for iCloud.

If you’re looking to go from power user to superpower user, don’t miss our tips on unzipping almost any archive file, creating custom HandBrake presets, capturing video from an iOS device, sending video messages with Mail, and bending Spotlight to your will.

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Apple introduced AirPrint in iOS 4, but the feature—which allows you to print from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch—is limited to folks with AirPrint printers. Luckily, a small utility called Printopia makes it possible for your iOS device to print to any printer your Mac can see. And that’s only half of what Printopia can do.

Download Macworld Video #183

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Human blood costs about $17.27 an ounce, silver about $34 an ounce. But both are bargains compared to the ink sold to the owners of inkjet printers, which can exceed $80 an ounce. Meanwhile, the ink used to print newspapers costs about 16 cents an ounce.

Today, color inkjet technology offers essentially photo-realistic output from consumer or home-office printers that cost less than $100. But even those who print out as few as 20 pages a week will probably have to buy several ink refills a year, at minimum, costing way more than the original price of the printer. Those who understand the issues can avoid the worst shocks. (See “Shopping advice,” below.)

“Everyone complains about the price of ink, but consumers do not do a net-present-value analysis when shopping—we only do it with higher-ticket items,” explains Federico De Silva, an analyst at Gartner, a market research firm. “They are going for a $49 printer, but when they have to refill it they realize they are spending $50 to $60 just on ink.”

Shopping advice

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Looks like you can’t teach a new iPad old Smart Covers. Elsewhere, HP shareholders want to know why everything it can do Apple can do better, BlackBerry lets the homefront slip through its fingers, and the iPhone might soon get all the G’s. The remainders for Thursday, March 22, 2012 will sleep when they’re dead.

iPad 3 Smart Cover Sleep/Wake Feature Not Working (Mark’s Hangout)

It seems that some Smart Covers, as well as some third-party cases with embedded magnets, aren’t playing nicely with the new iPad’s built-in magnets. The answer? Looks like Apple slightly tweaked the magnets in the new tablets, requiring a cover with a specific polarity. Man, I knew if I kept suggesting “reverse the polarity” as an answer that it would eventually pay off.

HP shareholders question why company isn’t more like Apple (AppleInsider)

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The writing may finally be on the wall for Hewlett-Packard’s storied print division.

HP is expected to announce soon that it will merge its Imaging and Printing Group into its PC-making Personal Systems Group as a way to reduce costs and simplify its business. Under the plan, Vyomesh “VJ” Joshi, who has run HP’s print business for the last 20 years, will step down, and Todd Bradley, head of the PC group, will run the combined division, according to reports.

HP has yet to confirm the move, though it has not denied it either. The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, said the change would be announced Tuesday. Reuters also reported that a move was imminent. If the announcement is made, it’s likely to come before HP’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday afternoon.

The move would reflect two realities, industry analysts said: That the market for printers and printer ink, long the backbone of HP’s business, has a dwindling future, and that HP needs to cut costs somewhere in order to boost spending on research and bring innovation back to the company.

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Much as you may have heard about the “paperless office,” the truth is that paper is still a popular item to have around the home and the office. And it is because many of us have at least one printer attached to our computers—either physically tethered via a cable or virtually connected over a network. Whether you hope to use that printer to produce photographs, drafts of your next novel, or flyers for your kid’s upcoming jai alai tournament, it will do you little good sitting in its box. Now’s the time to break it out and configure it for your Mac. The means for doing that is Mountain Lion’s Print & Scan system preference.

Your preference for printing

Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu and, in the Hardware area, click Print & Scan. If you’ve switched on your printer, attached a cable between it and your Mac, and if the Mac OS natively supports that printer, you’ll see the printer’s name in the Printers list. At this point, you’re well on your way. When you next wish to print something, just choose the File > Print command from within the application you’re using and your printer should shortly produce the printed document you’re after.

To the right of the Printers list is an area that contains a few options. They include:

Open Print Queue: When you print a document, the PrinterProxy application opens. (When it opens, it’s named after your printer.) Any documents in line to be printed will appear in its window. Within this application you can perform a couple of printing chores, which I’ll go into later in the column.

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We can now use our mobile devices for many of the tasks that once required a computer. Unfortunately, for the longest time, printing documents didn’t feel like one of them.

While we wait for that day, we can still output prints right now from the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. By spending a little time reviewing the iOS software available, and the Wi-Fi printers that can use it, we can configure a tidy workflow that will have us dishing out email attachments and photos faster than a short-order chef.

Not all of these configurations are AirPrint related. And for the moment, we’re not bringing our Mac into the workflow either.

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Reader Warren Lane seeks a way to quickly print his documents. He writes:

Is there some way to quickly print a single copy of a file without having to go through a Print dialog box?

Yes, if you do it in the Finder. Just open System Preferences, choose the Print & Scan (Lion) or Print & Fax (Snow Leopard) preference, select your default printer, and drag it to the desktop. Do this and an alias of your printer appears on the desktop (termed a desktop printer).

When you want to print a quick copy, just drag a file (or more, if you like) on top of the desktop printer and, in short order, your printer gives birth to a printed copy of your document without an intervening print dialog box.

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It might feel like you’ve just finished that last helping of turkey at the Thanksgiving, but the calendar doesn’t lie: The holidays are just about here. You’ve got less than a dozen shopping days until Christmas. Hanukkah starts even sooner—December 20—and even Kwanzaa is right around the corner, beginning on December 26. It seems like plenty of time to get your shopping done, but not if you’re relying on online shopping or buying customized tech gifts. If you still have gifts to order, pickup, or send, observe these deadlines to ensure that your gifts are delivered before 2012.

Gifts from the Apple Store

If you’re giving the gift of Apple this year and would prefer not waiting in a long line at the Apple Store, you can buy any in-stock product online and have it shipped to your house. Apple is even offering free two-to-three day shipping on most of its major products. However, if you want something delivered on or before Christmas Eve, you’d better act fast—some Macs need to be ordered by Wednesday to meet this deadline. Here’s the Apple Store’s express shipping schedule with a holiday delivery guarantee:

• iPad: December 19 for engraved, December 21 for non-engraved.
• iPod: December 19 for engraved, December 21 for non-engraved.
• iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS: December 21
• Customized Macs: December 14
• Regular off-the-shelf Macs and popular configurations: December 21
• Apple TV: December 21
• All other items: December 21

All of the above dates promise delivery on or before Christmas Eve. It’s too late to order an iPhone 4S online–they had to be ordered by December 5 to guarantee delivery by December 24. If you order one now, it’s set to ship between December 23 and January 3. At this point, you can either reserve an iPhone 4S after 9:00 p.m. for in-store pickup the next day, or else face waiting in line for a walk-in purchase.

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